


My Sword From Hell

by outglut



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, canon atypical beacon existing as a humanoid entity, entirely self indulgent, im not fucking with you, no really this is Just a rewriting of amnesty but with that extra bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24161812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outglut/pseuds/outglut
Summary: The figure brings one foot up to rest on top of the bookshelf as well, leaving its other leg dangling. “I…” it pauses. “am Beacon.”“Okay, but what-”“I wasn’t finished, Duck Newton.”-Or, everything is the same except Beacon has a humanoid form at the same time as the sword form. It's fun. It's wacky. It's zany. It's a bunch of canon scenes and some noncanon scenes with the added spice of Beacon having arms and legs.
Relationships: Beacon & Duck Newton
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	1. cool sword. does it listen to the cure?

**Author's Note:**

> it is three in the morning and i have an ap test in 8 hours if there's any typos i will fix them, Later. i am so sorry

Duck Newton is eighteen years old when he finds out he was supposed to save the world.

  
  
Duck Newton is also not the most heroic of men. Arguably, he is one of the _least_ heroic men in Kepler, if not the world. Hell, there’s tons of other people who could save the world better than Duck Newton could. So, when Duck Newton is awoken in the middle of the night after a particularly unpleasant dream by a glowing silhouette telling him of his destiny, he is, understandably, confused.

“I apologize for the rude awakening, Duck Newton! If you must take a moment to collect yourself before speaking, I completely understand!”

  
  
The first thing Duck wonders is why this figure knows his nickname. The second thing Duck wonders is what the _fuck_ this thing is.

  
  
“I- what the fuck?” He splutters, sitting up and staring at the silhouette in dumbfounded shock.

“My name is Minerva, Duck Newton, and I-”

  
  
Duck’s horror catches up to him, and he starts screaming.

-

After finding out about his _fate of cosmic importance,_ Duck Newton was even more convinced of his lack of heroism than he was before. He tries as hard as he can to convince himself that Minerva is just some stress-induced hallucination(he thought, at first, that he’d had some _bad_ weed, but when she kept showing up, he had to find another excuse).

And then, she dumps another extraterrestrial being into his life. Another thing he’ll have to convince himself is some weird hallucination.

He’s hanging with his friends(and also some people he _totally_ doesn’t know), drugs and hockey, the whole nine yards, when Minerva _appears in front of him._

Duck jumps back. “Jesus!”

  
  
“You- you alright, there, Duck?” Juno asks with a short exhale.

  
  
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how much I love The Offspring. And I got really excited,” Duck lies horribly, as per usual.

“Duck Newton!” Minerva continues to disregard the sanctity of drugs and hockey. “Participating in a bit of competitive recreation, I see! This could serve you well, it could develop your agility, as you square off against your foe in a may-lay!”

  
  
Duck Newton nods. Because _he_ respects the sanctity of drugs and hockey, and is _not_ about to ruin this sacred tradition by making everyone think he’s tripping Superballs™ when everyone else is tripping wiffle balls at best.

“Duck Newton, please do not ignore me! Tonight is an auspicious occasion! I require your undivided attention.” Minerva’s voice booms in his head.

  
  
Duck sighs quietly, then shouts to the group. “Ay, I’m gonna go take a leak, y’all, be right back.”

Duck escapes into the housewares department, and Minerva appears again.

  
  
“I’m sorry to interrupt, it seemed like you were having a jovial time!” she apologizes, though she doesn’t sound very sorry. Then again, her tone rarely changes from its usual upbeat boom.

“Yeah, I’m just trying to like, fucking chill! What’s up?” Duck snaps.

Minerva seems at a loss for words.

  
  
“I told you I’m not interested, move on!”

“I understand that, but I have one last offer for you.”

  
  
Just when Duck is about to shoot back that maybe that means she totally _doesn’t_ understand at _all,_ he catches headlights through the blinds. He hears a car stop just outside, followed by Juno shouting for everyone to get down, assuming it’s the police.

A car door opens. There are footsteps, followed by a faint, almost metallic crunching noise, and a deep sigh.

“Duck Newton!” Minerva speaks again. “It would behoove you to go outside before any of your friends are able to see what’s happening out there.”

Duck blinks a couple times. “Wh- Why, what’s happening?”

  
  
“You’ll see!” And Duck takes back his internal thought of Minerva’s tone rarely changing, because he swears she sounds smug as hell right now. Damn it.

“God damn it, alright, fine! Fine.”

Duck storms out to see the car(just a fuckin’ cab, of course) pulling away. He’s about to complain that there’s literally nothing to see when the moonlight glints off of something shiny in the grass. Laying there is a sword. A sword that looks like it has a mouth. Great.

  
  
Minerva disappears and reappears behind the aforementioned sword. “I know your hesitance, Duck Newton! You have voiced it clearly, and I would not deign to ignore it. But you have been chosen, Duck, and that is a decision that cannot be reversed. I would ask of you this, take up your blade, take up your fated instrument. And if you do not feel the call to pursue your destiny, I shall take my leave until you have grown to accept the tasks appointed to you.”

Duck looks at the sword in mild awe. “Well, I am of course honored, uh-” he laughs. “I mean I’ll keep the sword! That seems pretty kickass, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to— you want me to go kill the rest of the MacLeod clan? Then, I’ll be the only one? Remember the— there can only be one of us? Have you seen that movie? There can be only one?” He realizes halfway through his last couple sentences that she probably hasn’t seen that movie.

“I mean, I have not seen any of your Earth-”

  
  
Yeah, he was right. “I haven’t seen it, either. It’s like a sword guy, I don’t know! It seems kind of dumb to me, but I’ll keep the sword, hell yeah.”

He picks up the sword, fully intending to just fuck around with it. He does so, for a bit. Makes a joke about Dracula. It’s all a bit lost in the fact that there’s suddenly a voice speaking from behind him.

  
  
“ _Minervaaaa,_ instruct this beef boy to _unhand_ me, please.”

  
  
The voice is grating. Words are drawn out and _wrong._ Duck yelps and turns to face the voice. His first idea had been that the sword was talking, but the mouth hadn’t moved, and also that was stupid.

A new figure leans against a tree behind him. The new figure is a bit below average height(for a guy, Duck is assuming this is a guy?), with skin that reminds Duck of someone who hasn’t left the house in several days. It looks almost ageless, in a way, because when Duck tries to estimate an age, he finds that he can’t. It has dark eyes, and its hair is shoulder length, unruly, black with a streak of grey down one side. It’s wearing things Duck has only seen on people who get shittalked even more than _his_ crowd, all chains and spikes and jewelry that seems maybe a bit blasphemous to be wearing, dark clothes and a big leather coat that hangs off of its shoulders.

Duck drops the sword, and the figure flinches almost dramatically, flickering in and out of view.

  
  
“Oh, excellent,” it drawls. “Another skilled combatant.”

  
  
And it blinks out of sight again.

-

Duck would’ve left that stupid sword in that field if he could have. But he knew Minerva would probably bug him forever about it, and maybe he was a bit curious. So, he wrapped it up in his jacket and took it home.

  
  
Sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, now, Duck unwraps the sword and looks at it again. It looks like a sword. A weirdly whippy, bendy sword, but a sword. He reaches out and picks it up again. After a moment, the figure appears again, flickering into view on top of his bookshelf.

Duck lets go of the sword again, and it disappears.

He picks up the sword, and it appears. It seems to start to say something before Duck puts down the sword again.

When he picks it up again, the figure makes a screeching sound more headache-inducing than its actual voice. The sword moves in a quick wave on its own, and Duck decides to not let go of it again.

“What is this place?” it demands.

  
  
“My… room?”

  
  
“Is that what you call it?” 

“I- yeah, do you-”

  
  
The figure sighs, rolling its eyes so dramatically it moves its head with it. “Yes, yes, I know. It was a jab at your poor organization skills.” It pauses, then grins widely. “Get it?”

Duck stares blankly for a moment, then snaps. “Oh, _jab._ Like a sword.” He actually gives a short laugh. “Wait, no- what the fuck _are_ you?”

  
  
The figure brings one foot up to rest on top of the bookshelf as well, leaving its other leg dangling. “I…” it pauses. “am Beacon.”

  
  
“Okay, but what-”

  
  
“I wasn’t _finished,_ Duck Newton.”

Oh, so it knows his name. Cool. Of course.

  
  
Beacon looks annoyed, its mouth twisting again into an expression of distaste. “I am your _weapon,_ Chosen One. I am the blade with which you will fulfill your-”

  
  
“If you say destiny, I swear to God.”

  
  
It stares at Duck for a moment, as if being interrupted again was a crime akin to murdering its entire family with a pencil sharpener.

“The words I put to it do not matter, Duck Newton. It will not change your fate. Why must you evade like that?”

“I don’t have time to save the _world!”_ Duck shouts. “I got- I got, fuckin’- math homework!”

Beacon blinks. “ _Math_ homework.” It spits the words back at him. “You shirk your destiny… the safety of your world… the power of wielding me… for _homework.”_

“Well, it sounds kinda stupid when you put it that way-”

  
  
“Because it is, Duck Newton.”

  
  
“Now who’s interruptin’ who! Look, I’m not savin’ shit, man. I’m just some guy.”

  
  
“Then you had better get _learning,_ Just-Some-”

Duck drops the sword again, annoyed.

When Beacon disappears, the sword’s mouth turns down. “You cannot escape me that-” the words are muffled when Duck wraps it in the jacket again.

  
  
“I gotta get rid of this fuckin’ thing.”

  
  
Beacon grumbles angrily behind several layers of an old suede jacket.

  
  
-

Twenty years passed before Duck Newton saw Beacon again. And boy, were they a peaceful twenty years.

  
  
Now, he stands in front of the case where Ned had stored that annoying sword for all this time. When Ned flips the switch to turn on the light inside, Duck groans.

  
  
“I’m really- I’m havin’ kinda, second thoughts.”

“About?” Ned asks.

“At this point… oh god, man, once… once I open that case, I mean, this is real, this is happening. And it’s… it’s _so_ annoying,” Duck complains.

  
  
“An- annoying?” Ned tilts his head to the side. “What do you mean, annoying?”

  
  
“The _sword,_ man. It’s so annoying.”

  
  
“Does it talk in a funny voice, I mean…?” Ned is clearly joking, but Duck internally mourns his future with that stupid fucking voice nagging him for who knows how long.

  
  
“Just open the fuckin’ case, before I change my mind.”

  
  
“Alright.” Ned clears his throat and steps towards the lock on the box. “Back on with the clicks, key, open it up… there it is!”

  
  
The case pops open, and Duck has several crises just _looking_ at the stupid thing. He picks it up regardless, and the blade unfurls.

Beacon appears, sitting criss-cross on the cushion. “Well,” he drawls. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  
  
Duck did _not_ miss anything about the dumb fucking voice. “Hey, Beacon. Ah, Christ.”

  
  
“Well, _Duck Newton…_ I never thought.. this day would come. Have you had a fun _twenty years,_ Duc- _k?_ ” He asks bitterly. “I could sum up my-”

  
  
“I know, man, I know that you’ve been lo-” Duck starts to explain, but Beacon gives him that furious, annoyed look, like he was just inconvenienced in the most horrible way possible.

_“I could sum up my time, if you’d like.”_ He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Let me summarize: A man comes into the room. He lays some trash on the ground. He _leaves._ That happened a _thousand times,_ Duck.”

  
  
“Yeah, I know.” Duck sighs. “I know it’s been-”

  
  
“Who’s your friend, Duck?” Beacon’s eyes snap to the other occupant of the room.

  
  
Ned looks dumbfounded and awe-struck. “I am blown away. You’re a magician, Duck! I did not know that!”

  
  
Beacon’s expression changes to one of recognition before switching to a face one would make if they’d just stepped in something disgusting. “This is no… _parlor_ trick. _Beast._ I’m sur- _Imagine_ my surprise, I almost didn’t recognize you without a can of _so_ da and a maga _zine._ My name… is Beacon. I am the light that stands at the edge of the darkness, I am the tower above the fog, I am the most _beautiful, terrible weapon_ ever _crafted,_ and I have spent the last- _twenty years,_ in, a, **_ffffflea mar-ket!”_** Beacon is shouting by the end of it, his hands balled into shaking fists. He unclenches his hands, though, and puts on another fake smile. “And, _hhhhow_ are you?”

  
  
Ned pouts. “You’re also a bit of a prick.”

  
  
Beacon’s smile turns near-murderous. “ _Well,_ I’m a _sword!_ Get it?”

  
  
Ned roars with laughter, and Beacon clasps his hands together.

  
  
“Do you see, for _twenty years-”_ he casts a pointed look Duck’s way. “- I have wasted my… _rapier_ wit.” He grins as Ned laughs again. “That’s two in one.”

  
  
“That is a very cutting comment, my friend,” Ned shoots back.

  
  
Beacon’s grin falls, and he’s back to looking disgusted. “Well, look at you, attempting a turn of phrase, that must have been exhausting.”

  
  
Duck looks more and more uncomfortable by the minute. “Do you see what I mean, now? I mean, can you— I got about five minutes of that, and I mean, I was already really, really not sure about this, and he started chatterin’ away, and I was like ‘Okay. This is not for me.’ He was kinda the frosting on the cake, not the whole reason I bailed, obviously.”

  
  
Beacon crosses his arms over his chest and hops off the cushion, looking to Duck and jerking his head towards the door. He, evidently, wanted nothing more to do with this room.

  
  
-

When Beacon is finally put to use after twenty long years, he is ecstatic. Duck buries the sword up to its hilt in some Abomination’s gut just as Beacon’s humanoid form digs newly formed claws into the thing’s pelt, and it’s like every form of heaven all in one.

  
  
“Oh, _yes,_ this is much more like it, see?” he speaks as the monster screams. “I love being put to work, Duck, we could’ve been doing this for 20-”

  
  
Beacon is cut off by whatever this monster calls blood spraying everywhere as Duck whips the sword out of it. 

-

Duck Newton puts Beacon in a cabinet when he returns to his apartment. A _cabinet!_ He leaves the door open, allows sunlight in, and Beacon… _begrudgingly_ admits(though not out loud) that it is a kindness of sorts. He sees Duck Newton’s intent in it. But, _still._ A _cabinet._

  
As of now, the bond between Beacon and Duck Newton is not strong enough to let him manifest without contact with his Chosen One, and so Beacon busies himself with shouting his complaints from the cabinet. He does not know if he wants the bond to grow stronger, so he may be as much of a nuisance as he pleases, or if he never wants to _bond_ with _Duck Newton_ for as long as they exist in the same mortal realm. Either way, he will be as much of an annoyance as possible.

He unfurls himself and knocks a mug off the shelf, grinning as it shatters on the ground.

Duck Newton groans from the other room, and Beacon’s grin widens.


	2. duck newton almost drowns several times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> second arc shit

Beacon doesn’t think he has ever been _happy_ to see someone. But when Minerva begins appearing again and Beacon is greeted with her familiar voice, he almost considers the feeling. 

Duck Newton and Minerva begin sparring whenever she shows up. Beacon sits on the sidelines for the most part. If he’s feeling especially like a nuisance, he’ll use his control over the sword to make it bend backwards when Duck tries to catch Minerva.

Beacon is watching another sparring session when Duck finally gets a hit on Minerva. He swings the sword upwards, and Minerva falls, laughing as she does. 

“Oh, Duck Newton, you have been practicing! I see you’re really giving in to the instincts!” Her face, obviously, is not visible, but Beacon can tell she’s beaming.

“Yeah, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been getting a little bit better, y’know, I’m trying to put in my time and polish up a little bit.”

  
  
“Your skills are impressive, Duck Newton, more impressive than I expected them to get, there is a certain amount of… let’s call it ‘help’ that you receive just for being the Chosen One, but it seems like you’ve supplemented that yourself with doing a little… what did you call it, ‘CrossFit’?”

“ Yeah, I’m still doing CrossFit, I went back and, uh… y’know, I’m not gettin’ there every week, but I feel like, because of… magic, that’s probably fine. And destiny, y’know?”

When Duck Newton says he’s not getting there every week, he means he thinks about going every week and doesn’t about half the time. Beacon very kindly does not mention this.

“No, you’re- again, the instinct that you received upon becoming the Chosen One will do you well, there’s no need to overexert yourself. Duck, we only have a few moments, how is it going with Beacon, are you two getting along?”

Duck sighs. “It’s fine.”

  
  
Beacon barks a laugh from where he sits, and sticks his tongue out when Duck glares at him.

“It’s fine,” Duck repeats. “You don’t- just so I’m clear- you don’t have any other, like, magical weapons stashed somewhere or anything, do you? I mean, it’s goin’ fine, but, you don’t- I’m pretty locked in, I assume.”

  
  
Minerva laughs. “No, I do not. You two will need to grow closer if you want to-” she disappears before the sentence is over.

Duck sighs again.

“You know, Duck Newton-”

“Don’t.”

Beacon frowns. “I was just going to say you did…………. w _eee_ ll.” The last word was difficult for him to get out.

Duck blinks a couple times. “Oh. Tha-”

  
  
“For a beginner. If I had not…. _helped_ you, you would have been bested by Minerva for the- how many times has it been, Duck Newton? That one. Per _haps_ actually getting up and committing to that-”

  
  
“I swear, Beacon, one of these days, I’m gonna chuck you into a volcano,” Duck interrupts, sending annoyance through Beacon that he absolutely plans to express when he flickers out of view again, having been placed back through Duck Newton’s belt loops.

  
  
Beacon sighs, an obnoxious, metallic noise. “You are the _worst_ Chosen I have ever been wielded by,” he grumbles.

“And you’re the worst talking sword I’ve ever wielded.”

  
  
“I am the _only_ talking sword you have ever come into contact with, Duck Newton. I have had more owners than you can-”

  
  
“Oh, just shut _up,_ Beacon.”

  
  
Beacon rattles annoyingly in the cabinet for most of the night.  
  
-

When Beacon is next drawn for _real_ battle, Duck Newton is fighting a mass of water in a high school swimming pool. Beacon finds his logic of how sword-plus-water interactions work immensely flawed.

Beacon is drawn just in time for him to catch sight of his twenty-year-tormentor flopping painfully into the pool. Idiot. He gives a short burst of applause as Duck Newton and Aubrey Little praise his… “‘phoon” in awe, and watches as Ned is manhandled through the water. 

He turns to Duck Newton, expecting some course of action, to find that he has frozen. Of _course._

He snaps in Duck Newton’s face at the same time as Aubrey Little yells, “Duck!”, and his wielder seems far too dazed for battle. He is about to start berating his poor timing when Aubrey(finally, someone with sense, he wishes _she_ had been his Chosen) shouts a command.

“Grab the skimmer!”

  
  
“The… skimmer?” Duck asks slowly.

Beacon screeches in annoyance.

“Pool skimmer!” Aubrey specifies, pointing towards the object she’s referring to.

“All- alright,” Duck nods, finally coming somewhat to his senses. “Yeah, yeah yeah, yes, Skimmer skimmer skimmer.” 

Beacon wonders for a moment if his wielder’s mind has snapped, but Duck grabs the skimmer while Aubrey attempts to magically slow the water. It goes… _poorly,_ and Beacon feels as useful as a toothpick against this thing, with how Duck Newton is handling things.

After the disaster that is getting Ned out of the pool, Duck Newton suggests that they retreat, and Beacon, for once, agrees. 

-

Beacon is drawn again to fight this water monster when it snatches up one of the residents of Amnesty Lodge and attempts to drown him in a suspended bubble of water. 

“Yes, Duck Newton,” he drawls as he phases into existence. His joy at being drawn again is dampened by this stupid water monster’s existence, though. “This is… well, I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do with this one, eh, Duck? It’s a… quite a challenge.”

“Okay, Beacon, alright. Thank you for your input, that’s great,” Duck responds sarcastically. 

Duck uncoils Beacon’s blade and takes a stance that tells Beacon he’s about to do something stupid, and when Duck says “Hey, hold on tight, partner,” Beacon dispels his human form before getting chucked into the bubble of water can do it for him.

He passes through the water and watches as Jake Coolice falls through and onto the ground. He _also_ watches as Duck Newton is absorbed into the water, as well. What a useful endeavor this has been. He hopes that Duck Newton drowns, and he spends his time fantasizing about the prospect of it until he is grabbed again and stabbed into the light controlling this water. The sphere of water crashes back into the pool, taking Duck, Beacon, and a chair(when did that get there) with it.

Duck Newton pokes his head out of the water and weakly sings some sort of victory fanfare as Beacon’s humanoid form floats to the top, spitting out a fountain of water. 

“Well…” Duck says. “We did it.”

  
  
Jake Coolice laughs. “That was-” he has to pause to throw up water before he speaks again, feebly. “Ugh- that was… so not tubular.”

Beacon climbs out of the water, wringing out his hair as he speaks. “It is a shame, though. While floating in the water, I was so assured of Duck Newton’s destruction. I had begun fantasizing about my next owner. Would they be _exciting,_ willing to _take adventures._ Oh- so many possibilities awaited me while I had a pleasant daydream in the water, but I was very… hhh _hhhhh_ hh _appy_ to see you survive, Duck Newton.” It was true, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a pain to say out loud. In fact, Beacon suspects that that made it _worse._

Beacon is returned to the belt loops, and he tunes out the rest of the world in lieu of revisiting his wishes for a more exciting wielder. 

-

Beacon suffers through Duck Newton And The Gang’s trip to Sylvain. He listens to them patronize the gigantic cat that is meant to enchant their things. However, he tunes back in when Duck asks something peculiar.

“Yeah, I got a request. Do you do exchanges?”

  
  
Beacon can tell what Duck Newton is thinking, and he does not like it one bit. 

The giant cat speaks. “I’m curious to hear what you think would satisfy my mysterious needs.”

“Trade ‘em ups?” Duck Newton asks. “I got this sword, and I would love to trade it for… anything? A nice whip? And when I say a nice whip, I mean a good quality one, but also one that is of a gentle, caring spirit. Y’know, just a nice, kind whip- Supportive… won’t be, like, sort of picking at me… constantly. If you have anything, I would love to trade you, and I can kick in… um…” he digs around in his pockets for a while. “Seventeen dollars.”

  
  
_Picking at him constantly!_ As if Duck Newton wasn’t always griping at _him_ for something or another. Beacon should put _him_ in a box for twenty years, see if _he_ comes out spewing sunshine and rainbows at him. The ingrate, the imbecile-

He’s snapped out of his seething by the cat’s giant paw coming down onto the ledge Duck Newton stands on, and Duck Newton, true to his nature, jumping back and screaming like a baby. 

“Oh, I’m not- don’t worry, I’m... declawed,” the cat reassures. “Do you mind if I examine your blade?”

As Duck Newton pulls Beacon out of his belt loops, he appears next to him.

“Oh, Duck Newton, this is _adorable._ A lover’s quarrel, eh, Duck?” he grins with malice, nudging Duck in the side with an elbow that’s _just_ a bit too sharp.

Duck swats at Beacon’s arm. “Shut _up,_ Beacon, Jesus Christ. Here,this is the sword, please, anything you got! Here!”  
  
Beacon is handed over to the cat, and as he is raised into the air, his humanoid form disappears, fucked over by the limited, pathetic lack of a bond that is entirely Duck Newton’s fault for not taking those twenty years to become someone _worth_ even half of Beacon’s _hilt,_ and oh, Christ, he’s very close to this big cat, isn’t he?

  
  
“Unhand me, you-”

  
  
The cat, surprisingly, listens after a moment, handing Beacon back to Duck Newton. Beacon brushes himself off as if he has been manhandled in the worst way possible.

“This weapon is quite curious? Sorry, what was your name?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m Duck Newton, it’s a nickname,” Duck Newton says, like he always does, and Beacon is beginning to suspect that that is bait he will continue to cast until something bites. “I’m on the Forestry Service for the Monongahela State Forest, and also, I guess… the Pine Guard.”

Beacon ignores the rest of the conversation until he hears his name again.

“- I thought about enchanting Beacon, but he probably wouldn't even let me.”

Beacon pauses for a long while, giving Duck Newton a near-murderous glare. “Yesss,” he confirms.

He stays stubbornly silent for the rest of the trip, vowing to seethe about this until he rusts.

-

As Beacon stands and watches Duck Newton plan to slash at a pool with him, he starts to wonder if there are rules about killing your owner. He, surprisingly, hasn’t tried before.

He considers, for a moment, not unfurling the sword. Letting that monster just slam Duck Newton into the wall. It would be _so_ easy.

But, ultimately, it would make him a failure. So, he unfurls and slices through the beast’s arm, and when he feels that he actually does some damage, he is pleasantly surprised.

The next time Beacon is put to use, Duck Newton is not so lucky. 

Duck Newton extends Beacon’s sword form in front of him and begins sprinting. His form is _off._ Beacon’s human form dispels and returns to the sword, and he half-whispers, “Duck Newton… This is going to go poorly.”

And it does.

Duck is thrown, Beacon after him, and his radius does not allow any sort of aid before Duck Newton’s head collides with the guardrail of the reservoir. Beacon lands on the ground outside of it. Hooray.

He is resigned to waiting for something new to happen, rattling in his sword form until he sees Aubrey Little dive into the reservoir and come back up a minute later with Duck Newton, surely dead.

“Congratulations, new owner! My name is Beacon. My former owner has tragically died, but fear not-”

  
  
He is interrupted, how he _hates_ that, by Aubrey. “Beacon, shut up! Duck, are you okay? Duck!”

  
  
Duck, much to Beacon’s surprise, mumbles, “I got class tomorrow.”

  
  
Oh, memories. 

“What? Duck!” Aubrey Little repeats, before smacking him in the face. 

Duck jolts to attention. “Okay, alright, I’m here. What’s up?”

“A water snake thing flipped you- you hit your head on the reservoir- your- I jumped a fence?? It was sick.”

“I’m sorry I missed that.”

“And— yeah, I— sure I’ll do it again! We have to get back over, ‘cause Ned’s by himself, and that’s probably not going to go well. Are you cool?”

“Hey, real quick, though. The monster stuff is real, isn’t it?”

“Yeah?”

“I was kinda hoping it was a dream. Aw, man. Ah, well. I’m pretty banged up, but let’s get back over to Ned.”

  
  
The rest of the fight goes off without much more trouble. Well, much more that _Beacon_ would consider trouble.

After Duck Newton returns home and has a strange conversation with Leo Tarkesian(strange for _Duck._ Beacon is aware of Leo Tarkesian’s status as a Chosen, and he refuses to tell Duck Newton), Beacon flickers into view, sitting in the chair near his doorway.

“Duck Newton, do you _enjoy_ drowning?” 

Duck rolls his eyes. “I’ll drop you.”

“And I will continue to talk.”

“I’ll close the damn cupboard door.”

“No, you will not.”

Duck gives a defeated sigh. “You’re right, but that has nothin’ to do with the fact that it’s _real_ tempting.”

  
“Oh, go ahead, Duck Newton. Maybe it would show me that you are growing a spine somewhere in your bag of flesh.”

“In my- you have flesh, too, dipshit.”

Beacon grins. “I could prove that wrong.”

“Don’t- don’t. I’ll be sick.”

“Somehow, that tempts me even more.”

Duck Newton does not close the cupboard door that night. Beacon is both thankful and disappointed.  
  
  



	3. the one where shit hits the proverbial fan jesus christ what the fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> third arc shit! yes i am updating for the third time in the span of twenty four hours. if i dont i will Forget About This Fic's Existence within a Week and i want to finish this damn it im riding the hyperfixation waves until i die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> take a shot every time i type out Duck Newton

Duck Newton’s next Abomination turns out to be much more boring than Beacon hoped, at first. 

By boring, Beacon means that it hasn’t required him. Hard to use a sword to convince a bunch of people that they’re in danger and need to leave the building they’re in immediately. Actually, now that Beacon thinks about it, if Duck had done that, it would have gotten everyone out much quicker. He decides for the millionth time that Duck Newton is a coward.

Whatever the reason, Beacon had been collecting dust as a belt. He _was_ able, now, to manifest without direct contact, so Belt Beacon was fully capable of popping out and saying hello whenever he pleased, but, well. Even Beacon recognizes the indiscreetness of suddenly appearing when surrounded by a bunch of civilians.

When Beacon is finally drawn again, after minutes of Duck chasing after some footprints in the snow, he is up against a large hooded figure with an axe. It takes a step towards him.

“Duck Newton, you seem outmatched. Once again, you turn to me, Beacon, to help even the odds, ah?” Beacon grins.

  
  
Duck doesn’t take his eyes off his foe, even as he responds with his usual annoyance. Good. “Hey, li- just pipe down for just a second. Hey,” he starts to speak louder, directly to the figure. “I don’t want to hurt you. Maybe I do, because I don’t actually know what you want or who you are, so there’s a decent chance I want to hurt you, and I know this dude does.” He jerks his head to the side, gesturing to Beacon, who gives a mocking little wave at the enemy. “But like, what the fuck?”

The hooded figure slows down, as if it’s wondering whether or not Duck Newton is actually worth it. It even _turns away,_ and Beacon feels personally offended by this. Much to Beacon’s delight, though, it turns back and begins walking back towards Duck, starting to rear up the axe.

“Ah, shit,” Duck says, as if this isn’t as exciting as it is. “Um, alright then, fine! This is out of my nature, though, I do want that to be clear, because we don’t know each other so well.”

With that, Duck swings Beacon, hits the axe out of the figure’s hand, and slams into it, knocking it to the ground with his shoulder. When it hits the ground, its hood falls, and both Beacon and Duck assume, at first, that Duck has just tackled his goat pal from Sylvain.

They both quickly learn it is not, just before they hear two more similarly goat-esque sounds from either side of them. Beacon grins, and sends himself back into the sword, coiling around the neck of the creature Duck has pinned as two more goatmen step into the clearing.

  
“Hold up, hold up-” Duck starts to attempt to remedy the situation. “Y’all don’t know me- listen, I would not just kill your friend lyin’ here unarmed on the ground like this.”

Beacon’s sword mouth splits into a grin and he coils just that smallest bit tighter, enough to show the other goatmen he means business. “But _I_ most _definitely_ would.”

It has been _so long_ since Beacon was able to engage in some good old-fashioned bloodshed. Who could blame him for being a bit dramatic about it?

“Listen, y’all, I’m gonna be honest with you. He’s got a mind of his own,” Duck warns. “And I’m not playin’ _good cop, bad cop,_ you better start talking so I can call this whole thing off, ‘cause he will decapitate your friend.”

“Duck Newton tells the truth. Nothing would please me more. Please…… _discusssss.”_

The two goatmen look at each other, then the one with the shovel bleats unhelpfully, clutching its tool and stepping back. The one with the shears, however, sprints forward and shoves its shears through their hostage’s shoulder and into Duck’s. 

Beacon is forced to let go of the goatman so they don’t lose their leverage as Duck falls back, and the goat with the shears looks as if it is about to attack again when a car pulls up, causing the two uninjured goatmen to turn tail and run. Barclay steps into the clearing.

“Uh, okay, so it’s goat men this time?” he asks, taking in the situation.

“Yeah, apparently its, uh, goat men.”

Duck is helped to his feet, groaning in pain, the big baby, he was barely nicked by that thing. Him and Barclay discuss what to do with the goat man when Duck suddenly has a _genius_ idea.

“Alright, listen-” he sighs. “We gotta get this thing back to the lodge, or this, person-”

Barclay stammers, almost incredulous.

“I know, I know, I know, but look at it, man. It’s gonna die if we don’t do something. Hell, we got veterinary equipment down there, we could- somebody will be able to at least take a look, see if we could do something. Can’t just let the poor thing die. For all I know, there’s three of them on Earth. That’s not how I do it.”

Duck Newton, Lord of Compassion. Duck Newton, Saver of Abominations. Oh, how lucky Beacon is to have been gifted to an owner who goes soft for things that try to kill him.

Barclay laughs nervously. “We can’t tell Mama about this, okay?”

“Yeah, man, it wasn’t high on my list, bud. I just wanna help the thing if we can. It’s kinda my fault, mainly Beacon’s.” He raises Beacon up a bit.

_Mainly Beacon’s?_ If it weren’t for Beacon, he would have had _zero_ leverage, whatsoever! Beacon manifests in front of him. “Duck Newton, I will persist when you are dust. Do not take a moment to question m-”

  
  
Duck pulls the back of Beacon’s coat over his head and face, muffling his words. 

Beacon wonders again if he’s allowed to kill his Chosen.

-

Later, Duck is tending to the goatman’s wounds when Minerva appears. Beacon raises a hand in greeting from where he sits on one of the empty tables.

Minerva returns the gesture before turning to Duck. “Duck Newton! Are you prepared for t-” she pauses, seeming to fully register what’s happening. “Duck Newton? What is the meaning of this?”

“Minerva, your timing sucks. Um, I,” he sighs. “This goat…person… man, whatever, was- got hurt, and I’m just trying to, uh, keep it together long enough to save its life. You don’t know anything about… sutures, do you? I don’t even know if you have flesh, actually, come to think of it, right? You’re like a ghost.”

Beacon rolls his eyes and scoffs quietly as Minerva responds.

“I am not a ghost, Duck Newton, I have f- is this creature you’re tending to a foe?”

“Ah, you know, I don’t know. I think so. My gut tells me that this guy and his buddies are what’ve been responsible for some of the bad stuff that’s been going down lately, I can’t say for sure, but uhhh, yeah, I mean, I… Beacon almost cut his head off, and like, I felt like shit about it honestly, and he was hurt and I was just trying to fix him up. I don’t know, for um, for information, you know? We could grill him, or something.”

Minerva shakes her head. “Beacon tried to do what Beacon is _supposed_ to do-”

Vindication!

  
“- what _you’re_ supposed to do! It- Duck Newton, dispatch this beast at once. It’s vulnerable to you! Strike true! Drive your beacon into its heart!” She commands.

“Uhh, listen- I was about to say let’s put it to a vote, but-”

“Yes, let’s see how-” Beacon interrupts, and is interrupted in kind. 

“No, we’re not doing that,” Duck says. “I’m not going to kill an unarmed, unconscious creature in cold blood! I’m not gonna do it. Especially when I don’t know what his intent is!”

Minerva shakes her head again, looking furious.

“Your job is not to defend your foe, Duck Newton, it is to vanquish them. It is to leave them no quarter, no hope to which to cling. Your calling is to paint your besieged homeland in the blood of those who would see your world destroyed! Now _strike,_ Duck Newton!” she tries again.

“You listen to me,” Duck shoots back, and oh, that’s new. “I’m gonna save this weird goat, and then I’m gonna try to teach it English or some shit, and I can figure out what’s going on here. If you continue to push me to kill this thing, I will walk away from all of this. And if you need evidence that I am not kidding with you, look at the past fucking 20 years, Minerva. I’m gonna do this on my own terms. Now, unless you can hold a thread, I would ask that you leave me the fuck alone, and let. Me. Sew.”

Minerva looks to Beacon, who shrugs. As much as he respects Minerva, he is not about to risk being shoved in a box for another two decades for her. Sorry about that.

“I- I…”

And she disappears.

A couple hours later, Minerva appears again, accompanied by music. She holds her hand up, telling Duck to wait, before the music stops and she speaks.

She apologizes, and tells Duck of her home planet, once linked to another world as Earth and Sylvain are, now nothing but rubble. She brushes off Duck Newton’s sympathy and asks about his visions. When she gets a response, she seems… shocked. She doesn’t have a chance to get specifics before she vanishes again.

-

Beacon is overjoyed next time he is drawn. Duck has spent so many fights trying to incapacitate or relying on the brute force of his Chosen strength, and Beacon has been going stir-crazy. Internally. It doesn’t matter right now that he is being used to break chains, he can complain about that later- 

His joy quickly turns to dread as he gets a feeling that something is actually about to go terribly wrong for him.

He clashes against the chains and slices through them, embedding in the roots of the tree. Duck punches Indrid Cold in the face, they shout at each other for a couple moments, but Beacon is too focused on _seething_ to pay attention to the battle, for he has been _dented._

As he is pulled out of the roots, Beacon appears in front of him, a scar that mirrors the one on his blade running down one of his cheeks, the skin marred and reddish-grey.

  
  
“That’s just wonderful, Duck. What a wonderful battle scar this is. And using me to my true purpose! Beacon, breaker of _chains._ Beacon, the _emancipator,_ as I have always been known!” he clasps his hands together, his grip tightening as he continues to hurl invective at his Chosen. “Wonderful, this is exactly how I would want to go, Duck! You know me so well!” he says through gritted teeth.

  
  
Duck has the _nerve_ to look apologetic before he is thrown back into battle with the shovel-wielding goatman. 

Beacon grumbles and retreats back into the sword, deciding to break as many of Duck’s things as possible when he next gets the chance.

-

Minerva appears again that night, as Beacon is rattling in the drawer he is being kept in. Her words and Duck’s are muffled until his drawer is opened and he is retrieved, taken over and shown to Minerva.

She sighs. “Well, I- I suppose it can’t be helped. I’m sure he will still serve you well, it seems like he still has, uh… lethal capabilities. Um, Duck Newton, I know you are tired, but I have something I- need to say to you, and it cannot wait a moment longer.”

“Alright,” Duck responds.

Minerva gestures towards one of his living room chairs, and he takes a seat. Beacon stands to the side.

“Duck Newton, I am a m-” she falters on the word. “Murderer.”

Duck blinks.

“I told you earlier that my world, like yours, was tethered to an alien planet besieged by abominations from the other side.”

“Mhm?”

“This was only… part of the truth. I was the war councilor for my people. I-I pushed us into a conflict with that alien world. Our steel and fighting prowess crashed against their insectoid chitin and hivemind coordination, and there were losses, incalculable losses, on both sides, but ultimately our world lost the war. They left us with just a handful of survivors. And so I forced the last great minds of our civilization to create a weapon that could defeat our foe for good, a disease. Lethal to our enemy, innocuous to ourselves- I delivered the payload myself, Duck Newton, I watched as- every living being on that planet-” she paused. “I am the only survivor of both worlds now, and so I sought out the reason for our shared fate, and in doing so found Earth and Sylvain, and you, like other Chosen before you were selected to keep your people safe. That is just part of your destiny, Duck. Your true destiny is to not follow in my footsteps.”

“Damn, Minerva, that’s a lot to... dump on a guy, I’ve kinda had a full day already, without… startin’ to process your… genocide. Um…”

“There’s… more I have to tell you, unfortunately-”

“Damn, more than genocide, Minerva? Shit!”

“I told you this now because my concerns about losing your trust, of damaging our… relationship- in a few moments, it’s not going to matter anymore. Your power, Duck Newton, it stems from your connection with me and my world, that includes… your power of foresight. Surely you saw it, Duck, you saw in your vision, the meteor.”

Duck nods. “Yeah, yeah.”

Beacon does not like where this conversation seems to be heading. 

“…It was never coming to Earth. It was coming for me.” There is another pause. “My world was prepared once for this contingency, I will go to ground and try as I always have to survive, but the mechanism through which I am able to speak with you, it will be annihilated.”

“What?” Duck looks shocked. That’s because he is.

“This will be our last conversation, Duck Newton,” Minerva says. “I-I beg of you, remember my world-”

“Nah, nah, nah, hold on, there’s gotta be somethin’, uh-”

“Keep your world safe, keep Sylvain safe, continue your training. It will be… harder after our link is severed, but you mustn’t lose faith.”

"Minerva, why now? Like, wh-why would I finally decide to do something about this destiny and powers and all this garbage- Now? Now I’m gonna lose it all? Now I’m just gonna be some dipshit? With a sword? A br- a fucked-up sword.”

Beacon would be inclined to complain at Duck’s underestimation of his ability if he felt capable of forming words.

"I’m sorry, Duck Newton, I kn-”

"God, n- you know, fuck me. I’m sorry, I’m bein’ really self-interested right now, you got a meteor headed towards your house, let’s just get safe and take care of yourself and- and try to be okay, alright, I’ll be fine here, I’ll buy a gun or somethin’, Jesus.”

"It’s time to stop hiding. You need to finish what I started. Go to him,” Minerva says.

Duck gives her a confused look. “…Go to who?”

“Duck Newton. My pupil, my friend. I was not talking to you.”

She disappears without another word, and Beacon feels something he assumes is sadness for just a moment before there is a knock at Duck Newton’s door.

Beacon knows who it will be, of course, but Duck is fully surprised when he opens the door and is greeted by Leo Tarkesian.

“So, uh… we should probably talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *amnesty music plays*
> 
> the next chapter will probably be way less canon scenes and more Scenes That I'm Writing, as it's going to be duck and beacon dealing with the sudden loss of duck's chosen powers. also ive been spending hours painstakingly transcribing lines before i realized that I can just copy and paste from the transcripts. God Damn It  
> will the next chapter be uploaded in Literally Four Hours From Now? who knows!


	4. they do be damaged goods though

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> noncanon scenes, baby! this ones a bit short, kind of my own little lunar interlude of sorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was wrong it was 3 hours actually

At 6:15 PM the next day, Duck Newton is behind his apartment building, in the spot where he would usually meet Minerva for a sparring session. He is sitting on the concrete, staring into the empty space in front of him.

Beacon suddenly occupies that space. “Duck Newton, you know she’s-”

_ “Yeah, _ Beacon, I know. Thanks for the kind words, really appreciate it, as always,” Duck snaps.

Beacon frowns, moving to sit down in front of Duck. “Then why are you out here?”

“‘Cause- I don’t know, man, I just am. Why the hell do I have to explain myself, you probably don’t even know what sentiment  _ is.” _

Beacon is silent. Duck sighs.

“Sorry.”

Beacon blinks a couple times. “You did not  _ hurt _ me, Duck Newton.”

“Yeah, but… still. Not fair for me to take out my shit on you, y’know?”

  
  
Beacon shrugs. 

They are both silent for a while, until Duck speaks up again.

“You knew Minerva, right?”

“Yes,” Beacon confirms. “She was my wielder long before you were made aware of your fate.”

“Do…” Duck seems to hesitate on a question.  _ “Do _ you miss her?”

“Hm.” Beacon pauses. He is silent for a long while. 

The truth of the matter is that he does. The truth of the matter is also that he does not want to say this out loud, and to do so will be… difficult. 

“Y’know, actually-” Duck starts to backpedal, but Beacon interrupts.

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyes,” he forces out. 

“Oh.”

“She was a formidable owner. I am not a fool, Duck Newton. I recognize a talented Chosen when I am in the possession of one. It only makes sense that I would…  _ be affected _ by her absence. But, I did not see her for twenty years. Surely, I can survive it again.”

The gears turn in Duck’s head, as if he’s trying to think of what to say. “Sorry,” he decides.

“Duck Newton, you are going to have to be more-”

“About- y’know. Leavin’ you in the Cryptonomica for all those years.”

Oh.

Now it’s Beacon’s turn to not know what to say. 

“I mean, like, you’re a living thing, man. I’d probably hate to be stuck in a box for twenty years.”

  
  
_ “Probably?” _

“Depends on the box, I guess.”

Beacon cackles. “Well, I suppose that I will have to choose a particularly unpleasant box when I get my revenge.”

“Aw, man.” Duck Newton gives a short chuckle. “I shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

“Rule number one, Duck Newton, never let the enemy know your weakness.”

“I thought rule number one was never to talk about Fight Club.”

“Maybe one day you will understand that I have never seen a single movie you reference, and I will refuse to until the day I am rust and fragments.”

“How’d you know it’s a movie, then?”

  
  
“Because I, unfortunately, know you, Duck Newton.”

  
  
Duck laughs, then sighs. “It’s gonna be weird.”

Beacon raises an eyebrow, prompting him to go into specifics.

“Like, not sparrin’ with Minerva anymore. Sudden lack of routine and all that. I guess there’s Leo, but he’s got work, and shit. Also, he’s old, and could still probably beat my ass.”   


  
Beacon is quiet for a while. Suddenly, he stands, brushing nonexistent dust off his pants before gesturing for Duck to get up, as well.

Duck is confused, but he stands, anyways. “What’s this about?”

“Oh, it is simple. We will spar.”

  
  
Duck looks incredulous.  _ “We- _ man, no offense, but you’re kinda- you’re a twig, Beacon. Even without my powers I’d probably, like, snap-”

Beacon crouches low and kicks Duck’s legs out from under him with a spin. He stands up straight again. “What was that?”

  
  
“Me bein’ proven wrong,” Duck wheezes.

“Indeed,” Beacon agrees with a sharp grin as Duck climbs to his feet. “In any case, I am not talking about fist-fighting. Draw your blade, Duck Newton.”

“Beacon, you can’t expect me to fight you with a sword when you’re unarmed.”

  
  
“Unarmed?” Beacon’s grin widens. He raises his arms, and one of them shifts and flattens until it resembles a blade. “But they are right here, Duck Newton.”

“You can  _ do that?!” _

“My form is whatever I want it to be. Just as the blade is flexible, so is my appearance. Now, draw your weapon, Duck.”

Duck pulls out the sword. “Alright, as long as you-”

Beacon doesn’t give him time to finish his sentence, going in for a jab that Duck blocks with a panicked yelp. 

They spar for a few minutes, mostly harmless swipes and parries, until Beacon catches Duck off guard, his arm blade pointing at Duck’s chest fencing-style. He grins and steps back, his arm shifting back into an actual arm as he places his hands on his hips.

Duck is winded, holding one hand to his chest and another on his knee as he catches his breath. “That was just an excuse to beat me up, wasn’t it.”

“Ah, you’ve uncovered my master plan. Drat,” Beacon drawls, still grinning. 

“Gotcha.” Duck gives a breathy laugh. “I think that’s all I got in me today, partner. My endurance ain’t what it was.”

“Then that will be something to work on, Duck Newton. For the time being, perhaps it is time to go back inside, hm?”

“Yeah, probably,” Duck agrees.

When they’re back inside Duck’s apartment, Duck immediately collapses onto his couch. Beacon settles onto the armchair.

After a while, Duck speaks.

“Hey, Beacon?”

“Yes, Duck Newton?”

  
  
“Thanks.”

Beacon does not respond, but he gets the feeling that Duck either understands why or doesn’t mind. Either way, he does not pry for a response, and for that, Beacon is mildly thankful. He has had his fill of sincerity for the night.

-

Duck and Beacon continue to have sparring sessions. They start off every other day, because Duck is suddenly capable of being sore for the first time in twenty years, and he finds that he needs to take a day to recuperate in between getting his ass handed to him.

After a couple weeks, though, Duck’s muscles get used to the routine, and they fall back into daily sparring. He still gets his ass handed to him, though. 

“Y’know,” Duck says after one session. “I’m startin’ to think this really  _ is _ just a clever plot to beat me up. Is this your revenge, Beacon? Is that it?”

“Loss humbles a warrior, Duck Newton.”

Duck laughs shortly. “You don’t get to talk to me about bein’ humble, Tower-Above-The-Fog.”

“I am simply imparting my wisdom on the less fortunate, Duck.”

“You’re a real beacon of charity.”

Beacon laughs at the pun.

It isn’t until much later that Duck realizes Beacon never  _ really _ denied this being his revenge. 

Oh, well.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its My human form beacon and I get to choose the shape of the arms


	5. so much fucking shit happens in this arc why did i choose to write this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> send help

The monsters have been getting smarter.

Beacon is not used to the monsters being _smart._ He isn’t even used to the _people_ being smart. And, when Duck Newton whips his blade around a being made of light, he remembers why he isn’t used to the people being smart.

As the monster attempts to find a way out of its new bindings, Ned… _retrieves_ the keycard they need to get out of this room. He throws the card to Aubrey, and that is when Beacon feels the very strange feeling of the thing he is binding turning into particles and reforming outside of his hold. It runs and pushes into Ned, and then the two of them are gone through a rift in space.

That was new.

-

The next time Duck comes into contact with that creature, it takes the form of Bigfoot. 

Now, Duck is very aware of his mortality. He’s been fighting the physical manifestation of a centuries old being on the daily(and training with Leo on occasion), he is _aware_ that he can take harm.

Sadly, someone forgot to tell Duck’s arms that, because he’s currently skitching on the back of the _sheriff’s car,_ chasing after Bigfoot, and about ninety seconds in, he remembers that he is no longer indestructible. So now, Duck is holding on for dear life to the rear bumper of Sheriff Owens’ car, hoping to any higher power that he doesn’t decide to suddenly slam on the brakes and find a Duck Newton pancake special on the back of his car.

The sheriff whips around a turn and keeps driving, gunning the engines in pursuit of Fake Bigfoot. Then, suddenly, they come out from under an overpass, and the Bigfoot is gone. In the reflection of the car, Duck sees the big guy reappear behind him, and he scrambles up on top of the car, smacking the roof.

“Ey, ey man, fucking bigfoot’s behind you, dude, drive! Jesus Christ!” He shouts. “Hey, I’ve been skitching this whole time, brother, I’m really sorry but you gotta fucking drive right now, dude, come on! I’m vulnerable as hell! Come on! Don’t make me fight bigfoot, I wasn’t thinking through this shit! Go! I’m not gonna fuckin’ fight bigfoot!”

“What the fuck are you doing on my car, Duck Newton?” Sheriff Owens yells back.

“Yeah, I was tryin’- you’re gonna ask me why I skitch? Now who’s the narc!”

Owens yells something unintelligible before slamming on the gas, chasing after the Bigfoot that has now reappeared in front of the car. They speed past landmarks, and they’ve just passed the turnoff towards the Lodge when the Bigfoot disappears and Owens slams on the brakes, sending Duck flying off the car.

He finds himself in awe of the accuracy of those Wear-A-Helmet PSAs, because while he definitely feels like shit, his skull isn’t cracked open. Wahoo.

Owens jumps out of his car and draws his gun. “Duck Newton, I don’t know what you’re doing here- I don’t know what- I’m- I’m dragooning you, Duck Newton. We’re not gonna let this thing escape. This is the closest I’ve ever been to finding out what’s going on in Kepler, and you’re gonna help me. You understand me?”

Duck puts a hand over his eyes, closing them tightly. “Oh man… can you just, like, give me a second? Jesus Christ.”

He is grabbed by the scruff of his collar and dragged up into a standing position.

“Alright, alright, calm down, fuck. I just fell off a car, jesus. Let me get a pull off this asthma inhaler, real quick.” He takes out his inhaler and takes a deep breath. “Alright, alright, hold on. Nope, need another pull.” He does so. “Yeah, alright, so Bigfoot’s real.”

Owens gives him a blank look.

“Boy, I can’t imagine how it must be to find out this way, but Bigfoot’s real.”

He shakes his head, then dips back into his car and retrieves a canister that he throws to Duck. “Now listen, my service revolver is the only weapon I got on me right now, but that there’s some industrial strength pepper spray, so uh, I don’t know if this thing’s got eyes or whatever, but we need to go _now,_ we are losing it.” And he takes off into the woods.

Duck grumbles to himself as he follows. “Yeah, let’s go. Fuck it, man, alright. Sure, why not. If you’ve got the guts, I guess I do, too. Let’s go. Let’s go fucking kill Bigfoot there.”

As they track Bigfoot through the woods, Owens starts talking again. “So y-you fought this thing back in the morgue? What do I need to know?”

“Um, it’s...I don’t understand it any better than you do, man. Um, it is, uh, dangerous. It is...uh, big- you saw that, saw it’s big. We shouldn’t be fighting it. There’s one, there’s a good one for you. This is a mistake. If you wanna bounce, like, I’m- I am with you. Me and you taking this thing on together? Not smart. Not smart at all. I’m on the record for that.”

“I mean-” Owens sighs. “Ah, god. You might, you’re probably-”

There is suddenly a loud roaring in the distance that quickly gets louder as Hollis pulls up on their motorbike and jumps off, letting it fall to the ground.

“It’s close, right?”

  
  
Duck blinks. “What?”

“The f- the _monster,_ come on, Duck! Are you really gonna keep pretending?”

“Nah, honestly, I’m happy you’re here,” he admits. “Three of us means we’re um- well, we’re still probably gonna die, but it’s, like, better odds for sure. Um. So you wanna help us fight Bigfoot? ‘Cause Bigfoot’s real. Let me catch you up: Bigfoot’s real, and I feel comfortable telling you about that because I feel like there’s an 80% chance you, me, and Dupree over here are going to fuckin’ beef town. You know, we don’t have much of a choice here, folks, but let’s keep rolling. Anyway, Bigfoot’s real, now you’re caught up, let’s go kill it.”

Hollis and Owens stare at Duck with blank, shocked expressions, and then there is a noise like heavy breathing bouncing around them, as if it’s trying to mess with them. Duck notices a shadow, looks up to see Bigfoot falling down onto the three of them, and pulls out Beacon to slice across the Bigfoot’s middle. Duck takes most of the hit as it continues crashing down, and climbs up as it rolls to the ground.

“Oh, guys, one more thing!” Duck yells. “My belt’s a sword. Anyway... shit. Now you’re caught up.”

Beacon, who had appeared in the circle of fighters, waves. “His sword is also me,” he says, both of his arms elongating into blades.

“Yeah. Oh, yeah! My belt’s a sword, I just stabbed Bigfoot-”

“I’m the sword.”

  
“And those are the three things. Now you are indeed caught up. Let’s go!”

Hollis runs up with their club and smashes it into the Bigfoot’s face as Beacon runs in and swipes at its legs, catching both of them in one swing. Sheriff Owens empties his revolver as the two of them fall back, catching it with some of the bullets before the Bigfoot falls dramatically and limps back off into the forest.

Hollis and Sheriff Owens run after him immediately, and Duck can see that Beacon sure would like to, as well, but Duck has to take a moment to catch his breath before following.

“Good work! I did think we were gonna die, there, but we can go die deeper in the woods. That’s fine. Let’s go!” He keeps talking as he follows. “Make it real hard. You know what? Get a few more miles up there, this is gonna be true crime podcast material. You know, I’d love to be able to create that. That’s a system of perpetual giving right there. Come on! Let’s go.”

Beacon rolls his eyes dramatically.

Eventually, they run into the clearing with the archway to Sylvain. 

“This is exactly where I lost sight of it last time,” Hollis says, and they and Owens start sweeping the perimeter for the Bigfoot.

Duck starts looking around, and he makes a lot of realizations as he does, but maybe the most important one is when he catches sight of the Bigfoot behind a treeline. It seems calm, as if its monstrous rage before was just an act.

It catches Duck’s gaze, and it _smiles._ And then it disappears.

-

Beacon is drawn next against his greatest foe yet: a computer.

Now, obviously, this is a joke, but whatever. Beacon isn’t choosy, it’s something to break, and he’s raring to break some more.

“Alright, motherfucker!” he shouts. “I don’t know what the fuck you want with this thing, but I can tell you what I need it for, and that’s about zilch-o! I don’t care what’s up there, I could give a shit. Honestly, I’m not that interested. I’m more of a forestry, y’know, geoscience kinda dude. I don’t give a shit. But I know you want it real bad. So you let her go right now, or I just start choppin’. My sword here, it was real horny for machines, I’m betting. I don’t know. I haven’t cut up a lot of machines with him. But put her down, now!”

The monster continues to approach as Duck threatens, and the security guard it was… _holding,_ falls out of it.

Duck’s mortality, apparently, comes catching up with him, because Duck immediately turns and runs, holding Beacon out in front of him with his eyes closed, yelling for Dr. Drake to follow after him. He gets out of the way just before the monster collides with the door he had been standing in front of, and takes a moment to start to pursue him again. He swings Beacon and slices straight through the fence, but by then, the monster has stopped. It turns around and moves back towards the telescope. Duck and Sarah climb through the hole in the fence, and as they do, they hear the approach of a delivery truck.

They turn, and see Leo Tarkesian drive directly into the monster.

The monster splatters and stops moving as Leo’s truck spins out of control and crashes on its side, and Duck rushes in to check on Leo. He smashes the windshield with Beacon.

“Heyyy, Duck. How’s it goin’?” Leo asks, holding a wound on his head.

“You dumb piece of shit. What did I tell you? The whole thing with the vision, and stuff!”

“Duck, I-”

“Damn it!”

  
  
“I, uh, I had another- can you get me out of here, first? It’s just…” Leo laughs.

“Say you’re sorry first!” Duck demands.

“I’m sorry. I got a head wound, Duck. I’m very deeply sorry.”

  
  
“‘Bout to have a head wound,” Duck mumbles angrily. “Dumb piece of… think you have a head wound and come out, you dumb piece of…”

Duck awkwardly tries to get Leo out of the truck as the smoke from the crash thickens. It takes a while, but he eventually gets him out. As Leo climbs out, and it becomes apparent that he is not, in fact, mortally wounded, he speaks.

“The vision changed, Duck,” he says. “It changed for me, and I saw it during the day, which is weird. That’s never happened before. And I don’t know if you saw the same thing, but I saw… I saw you, Duck. I saw you on the ground in front of the thing here, and you were dying by yourself. And so, I said, ‘No, that’s not gonna work.’ I hopped in the-”

“Oh…” Duck looks dumbfounded. “Well, I guess I can appreciate the effort, for sure.”

Leo laughs again. “This is my only truck. I’m supposed to do a round… I guess that’s tomorrow’s problem. Uh-”

Before Leo can finish speaking, a hand made out of white light grabs him from the back of his neck and chucks him effortlessly several feet away. The creature attached to this hand comes out of the monster Leo just crashed into, big and four-armed and disintegrating until it makes a loud, electronic sound, and the disintegrating stops. It begins to sprint at Duck.

“It’s okay,” Duck says to it, and Beacon would facepalm if he was corporeal at the moment. He continues to try and talk it down, and Beacon tunes it out, because he finds it annoying.

It turns out to _also_ be completely useless, because the entity does not stop charging. 

Duck makes an attempt to run around it, and the monster grabs for him-

And tears Beacon out of his belt loops in the process. It throws him to the ground and starts marching towards Duck and Leo.

Beacon flickers into view a foot or two away from his sword form on the ground, and he doesn’t really have time to think about the implications of that being a thing before he sprints after the slow moving creature and catches it across its back with a sharpened arm just before it gets out of his radius, jumping back when it turns to face him.

“I do think I’m far more interesting than those two meat boys,” he says with a sharp grin, walking backwards to lure the monster farther away as Duck drags Leo into the telescope. 

He busies himself with faking out the monster until Duck gets Leo to safety, and disappears with a grin just as the creature tries to crush him. Its hands close around empty air, and it makes another angry electronic noise before turning back to Duck and charging again. 

Duck sprints around it again, and it catches him _again,_ slamming him to the ground for a moment before Duck manages to get up and to the back of Leo’s truck. He emerges with the Flymaster and sets it off in the creatures direction, sending it flying up into the sky until it loses its hold and falls straight into the dish of the Green Bank Telescope. He seems to catch a glimpse of something through a window, and then he stops and holds his head for a moment before he looks back to the window, and something like shock and recognition pass across his face.

Beacon manifests, and is about to ask what the hell is going on, when a familiar silhouette appears behind Duck.

“Hello, Duck Newton! It seems like you’ve kept up with your training, as with your strong, muscular legs. Tone and definition is so important, Duck Newton!”

Beacon gives a sharp laugh, and she turns to look at him, clapping her hands together once. “And you’ve bonded with Beacon! You know, Du-”

“Where the fuck have you been?” Duck interrupts.

“I have been… well, for a while, buried under a pile of rubble. A considerable pile, Duck Newton. Uh, but I am big and strong, as you can tell from my projected silhouette, so I managed to get myself out of that situ- Duck, it is a complicated story, and I do not have enough time to tell it.”

“God, it’s so fucking good to see you.” Duck’s posture deflates, relieved.

“It’s good to see you, too, Duck Newton. Now, I need you to start climbing immediately.”

Duck grabs the broadsword from the back of the truck before returning to pick up Beacon as well. “Did you see Endgame?” he asks.

Beacon facepalms for real, this time.

“What?” Minerva’s head tilts.

“Did you see Endgame? I didn’t know if you- how much free time-”

“I don’t know-”

“You’ve been away for a while, so I didn’t know-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Duck Newton. But every question you ask me about pop culture, I’m assuming, is a second you are spending not climbing.” 

Beacon pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head before disappearing as Duck begins to climb. 

Duck falls after a few feet.

“Um… maybe I was wrong, Duck Newton, about your tone and definition. Are you going to be able to do this?”

  
  
“Well, um… Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah! Yeah! Hold on. Yeah. I'm gonna… fuck, I don't know, Minerva. Shit. Look at me. I'm like a fuckin‘ postal worker. A gym teacher. I'm… I mean, I'm just a regular dude.”

Minerva sighs. “Duck Newton, I have known you, obviously off and on, for some years now. And even when we were apart, even before you were my ward, you were never a ‘normal dude’.”

She extends a hand symbolically, and Duck Newton takes it literally. Moron.

Duck nods and pulls out Beacon again. 

“Ah, finally, time for battle,” Beacon drawls sarcastically. “Why are you-”

“Time to climb, idiot,” Duck responds, and whips Beacon up and into the lattice work of the telescope. Beacon coils around it, and Duck almost effortlessly pulls himself up into the dish.

The creature is in the middle of the dish, grabbing the base of the antenna, and Minerva appears again, next to Duck.

“Duck Newton, what is about to happen is going to be pretty wild. I’m not going to lie to you. But it’s not going to happen if that thing gets what it wants and destroys the Green Bank Telescope.”

“Alright, Minerva. Alright.” He sighs. “I’ll just _stop it.”_

“Use your sword, Duck Newton, to stab it and hurt it. We talked about this.”

  
  
Beacon coils impatiently. “Ah, how I missed someone with sense.”

“Thank you very much, Beacon.”

“Yeah, alright,” Duck agrees. “Man, I _have_ missed your tutelage.” 

“It’s like, core strategy number one,” Minerva responds with an amused tone.

Duck laughs, then takes Beacon in one hand and Leo’s broadsword in the other before calling, hesitantly at first, to the monster.

“Hey… Hey, stupid!” He pauses. “It’s me, Duck Newton. … Local beefcake. And I’m gonna kill you, with these-” he raises Beacon and the broadsword, idly spinning them. “- as unlikely as it may seem. I know I sound about as convincing as, well, I probably sound to you. But y’know, I’m all out of options. I threw my cool jetpack at you, my friend hit you with a truck, my sword stabbed you, so here’s my cool thing, okay? _I’m_ gonna stab you until you die with my two swords.”

Duck strides towards the monster quickly, swinging the broadsword with as much strength as he can muster. It chunks into the thing, and Duck angrily swings Beacon, who unfurls and recoils, cutting a sizable bit off of the creature with a grin. The monster catches Duck with its other two arms, grabs him by the throat and chucks him back, and where Beacon at first expects Duck to fall flat on his back, he lands on his feet, looking as if being thrown had done nothing at all to him.

_Finally,_ his Chosen is back. He had been getting sick of just calling him _Duck_ in his mind. There is no drama in that.

Minerva appears in front of Duck, between him and the monster. “Duck Newton… this is going to hurt a whole bunch. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” Duck nods, determined.

Duck seems pained for a moment until he doubles over, dropping the broadsword to hold his head, until suddenly, his pain seems to disappear entirely. When Duck looks up, there is a hole in the sky, and through the hole there are ruins of a planet that Beacon recognizes well, and then a shadowy silhouette that the both of them recognize, and then Minerva is leaping through the hole, holding a giant two-handed sword.

“Thanks for the lift, Duck Newton!” she booms.

“I _had_ it…” Duck responds quietly.

She smiles, and turns to face the monster, who is starting to fade away as all the others have in the past. “Duck Newton, it looks like you already handled it.”

The monster slowly attempts to make its way back towards Duck. He steps forward, readying Beacon to chop at its legs, when it suddenly stops and turns, forming a rift in space overflowing with blinding light and hobbling towards it.

“Minerva, where is it going?”

  
  
Minerva does not answer, instead rushing towards it. 

Duck whips Beacon around one of its arms, pulling himself closer to catch a glimpse of what’s through the rift, and he sees a facility, with one tall cylindrical chamber encasing a wide, shallow dome of light, and Beacon feels a pull towards this dome like nothing he has ever felt before. A murderous pull. He wants to _destroy_ it, and he does not know why, but not in the way he usually feels, with his senseless destruction. He realizes he does not _want_ to destroy it- he feels as though he _needs_ to. And it is strange. 

The dome screams, and the rift closes.

“See, I had it handled,” Duck says.

Minerva sits, resting her elbows on her knees. She is smiling widely, and she is starting to tear up. 

“Have you seen that world before, Duck Newton? That world of light?”

  
  
“No. No, nothing like that.”

Minerva extends a hand, and Duck helps her up. 

“I am not quite sure what that was, my friend. But I assume that they know who we are. And hopefully now, Duck Newton… now they know what we’re capable of.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amnesty music plays. turns out duck was Not there for either Ned's Death OR mount kepler getting fucking nerfed so we get to deal with the repercussions of that in the Next chapter, which is probably gonna be another lunar interlude of the two months where minerva and aubrey are living with duck. and now beacon can appear whenever the fuck he wants, so technically beacon too, but he's been there for a while. *spongebob voice* the gangs all here....


	6. crowded sitcom apartment time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its like a sitcom but if it was also a sports anime. also theres feelings. not like That, just normal person feelings

Beacon was not used to so many people being in Duck Newton’s apartment.

Then again, Beacon was also not used to having semi-free reign over his manifestation, at first. He was not used to the absence of Ned Chicane, and he had grown to not be used to the presence of Minerva, either, in her absence. He was not used to seeing federal agents everywhere(bastards, if it weren’t for his still limited radius he’d have attacked one by now, but he settles for making rude gestures at them behind Duck’s back when he gets the opportunity). He was not used to the feeling at the back of his mind that had been sitting there ever since he saw that dome through the monster’s rift, the need to break the thing into a thousand tiny pieces.

He was not used to a lot of things, but Beacon is nothing if not flexible, so he adjusts. 

When everything had hit the fan, Beacon had initially planned to give Duck some space. Especially now that he didn’t need to be attached at the hip(literally) to his Chosen to manifest. After a few days of mourning, though, Duck invited Beacon to spar again. This confused Beacon.

“You know, Duck, that your mentor is  _ back,  _ right? You do not need to continue to get your ass handed to you by your sword.”

“Hey, now, the odds are evened out now that I’m all Chosened up again,” Duck defends. “Besides, I think- I dunno, I- I wanna let Minerva, like, focus on other shit? She’s livin’ on a whole new planet now after years of pretty much isolation. I should let her adjust instead of bein’ like,  _ hey, come and fight me, teach.”  _ He pauses. “And you weren’t, like, her substitute, or anything. If anything, that was Leo. Sadly, I’m stuck with you.”   


  
Beacon laughs. 

“So, like, we still gotta  _ bond, _ or whatever.”   
  


“That is correct,” Beacon admits. “Well, then. Let us spar, Duck Newton.”

When they go back behind the apartment and begin their sparring, Beacon finds that the playing field has, in fact, been somewhat evened with the return of Duck’s Chosen powers. He doesn’t  _ win,  _ but he gets some good hits in and manages to almost catch Beacon off guard once or twice. 

Beacon ends the fight with his usual poke to the chest, grinning. “Well… it looks like you  _ can _ fight. I was beginning to think  _ I _ was your only source of prowess.”   
  


“Oh, shut up, Beacon.”

There is clapping from somewhere off to the side, and Beacon and Duck turn to see Minerva, applauding with a wide smile on her face.

“I will admit, Duck Newton, this style of training is a bit... contrary to the traditions of the Chosen before you, but that was thrilling to watch!” She claps once more before dropping her hands.

Duck grins sheepishly. “Ah, well-”

“Of  _ course _ it was, Minerva,” Beacon interrupts, his arms morphing back into their usual shape. “To imply that it could be anything but-”

“Yes, yes, Beacon. Anything you participate in is thrilling, I know,” she rolls her eyes without any actual annoyance, used to Beacon’s typical demeanor by now. 

“Sorry ‘bout breaking those traditions,” Duck says.

“Oh no, Duck Newton, there is nothing to be sorry for! Sometimes, traditions are meant to be broken.”

“Especially when it’s fun,” Beacon adds.

“Fun for  _ you. _ This guy fights dirty, Minnie. He sucks.”   
  


“Aaaand yet.” Beacon gestures around him. “Here we are.”

“Here you are, indeed!” She pauses. “Would you- would either of you mind if I joined in?”

Duck blinks a couple times. “I mean-” he seems to think for a moment. “I feel like I can keep goin’. Why the hell not? You sure?”

Minerva laughs. “I would not ask if I wasn’t sure.”

“Fair.”

Beacon grins and retreats back into the sword, coiling and uncoiling a couple times.

“Oh no, Beacon, I meant  _ you _ you!” Minerva specifies.

Beacon manifests again, his head tilted to the side in a confused manner.

“Surely you two have not only fought  _ against _ each other like this?”

Duck shakes his head. “I mean… he does his thing and I do mine, and  _ sometimes _ they end up with the same goal, but… for the most part? I guess?”

“Duck Newton, you two are a team! Perhaps it would do your bond well to practice that?”

“Huh.” Duck thinks about this before shrugging. “Guess I’m cool with it. Beacon?”

“As much as I  _ do _ love beating you, Duck Newton…” Beacon grins and clasps his hands together. “I would enjoy that immensely.”

-

For the days after that, the three of them spar like that, Duck and Beacon vs. Minerva. Sometimes Aubrey sits on the sidelines and cheers them on in a very impartial manner.

It takes a while for Duck and Beacon to actually work  _ together. _ Most of their interaction in battle has been separate unless Duck is wielding Beacon, and even then, Beacon tends to operate in his own interests more often than not. For the first few sessions, they are… not  _ clumsy, _ but  _ uncoordinated. _

Beacon, even though he has grown to have a begrudging,  _ slight _ respect for Duck, still gets annoyed with his hesitance now that Minerva is flesh and blood in front of him. He should  _ know _ that Minerva does not get caught so easily. At first, Beacon tries to overcompensate for Duck’s undercompensation. He ends up being too aggressive, forgetting to act in Duck’s interests as well as his own.

Slowly, though, the cogs of their figurative machine start to turn more smoothly. They still get jammed, of course. They weren’t going to perfect it any time soon, but they had their moments of doing really cool shit, followed by them getting distracted by the fact that they had just done some cool shit.

During one sparring session where the two had been operating particularly well, Beacon had moved behind Duck at some point or another. Duck had crouched down when Beacon told him to, and Beacon ran up, using Duck’s back as a sort of springboard to leap  _ over _ Minerva, flipping into a crouch of his own behind her. This was some anime-level cool shit.

She had turned so that both of them were in her line of sight, only to find both of them dumbfoundedly staring at each other, an unspoken  _ We  _ did _ that??? _ hanging in the air. She laughed, and swung at Beacon with her two-handed sword. He barely snapped back to attention in time to block her, and the fight had continued as normal.

Needless to say, the two of them still had some work to do before they were truly a  _ team. _ But… they were getting there.

-

Duck, Minerva, and Aubrey are all sat on the couch, watching some movie that Beacon half pays attention to from his spot on the armchair that he would claim as his if it weren’t for the fact that Duck Newton’s cat  _ also _ seems to enjoy this chair. Beacon manages to share, because he thinks the cat is funny, and the cat manages to share, because Beacon has claws that are far more threatening than it. They have an arrangement. Beacon absentmindedly switches between scratching between the cat’s shoulder blades and petting it. Whenever he tries to stop, it complains, so he assumes that he is trapped here for eternity. 

Every minute or so, Aubrey tosses a couple pieces of popcorn to Beacon, who catches them in one hand and throws them into his mouth. 

-

Duck has started to leave Beacon on the coffee table. Beacon assumes this is due to his habit of appearing in the middle of the night to request that Duck move him somewhere closer to the kitchen so he can get a midnight snack.

Eating is a strange experience for Beacon. He didn’t do it often before- didn’t really need to, he’s a sword- but Earth food is… good. He doesn’t actually know where the food  _ goes,  _ strangely. Maybe it just disappears into the ether, because he never really needs to do anything about it once it's passed his mouth. He is thankful for this. Beacon finds mammals a strange and disgusting subset of animals. 

Beacon manifests one night to find Aubrey sitting up on the couch she’s been sleeping on, holding a piece of folded up paper. They lock eyes, and both look as if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been doing, even though neither of them were doing anything remotely  _ wrong. _

Aubrey looks… Beacon has to take a moment to put the pieces together until he realizes that she has been crying. Oh, no.

“Hey, Beacon,” she says, followed by a short sniffle.

“Hello,” Beacon responds shortly.

He stands there for a couple seconds, before he grabs the box of tissues sitting on a small table and silently holds it out to Aubrey.

Aubrey laughs quietly. “I- yeah, thanks,” she says, accepting it and wiping away her tears.

Beacon settles quietly into the armchair.

After a bit, Aubrey speaks again. “Did you- were you close to Ned, Beacon?”

Beacon scoffs. 

“I’ll take that as a no.” She pauses. “Thinking back, I- no, that’s probably not true. I was gonna say I don’t know if I was, either, but…” she falls silent, fiddling with the piece of paper in her hand. “We were. And I miss him, weirdly? I still- I’m still mad at him, but I miss him.”

Beacon did not understand, but he did connect something else. “Did Ned Chicane write something to you, too?” he asks.

Aubrey blinks. “Did he write something to  _ you?” _

“Nnnnnno. He wrote something to Duck. I read it.”

“Of course you did,” Aubrey says with a small laugh. “I shouldn’t ask what it-”

“I have no respect for his privacy or Duck Newton’s,” Beacon responds. “It was silly. A little bit cheesy, writing of how much he  _ admires _ Duck Newton. He ended it with a  _ quote from a movie star.” _

“Which one?”   
  


“‘That’s all, folks?’”

“Did he really call Porky Pig a  _ movie star?”  _ Aubrey asks, incredulous. “God.”

After a moment, she holds out her paper to Beacon. “If you want to.”

Beacon considers this. Maybe he shouldn’t. Then again, she is offering, and if she was offering in the strange, empty way some people do… well, it will serve her well to learn that Beacon has no recognition of social cues. He takes the paper and unfolds it, reading it over.

As he reads, Beacon finds himself feeling something he has never felt before. He thinks that he feels _moved,_ in a way, by Ned Chicane’s words. He isn’t about to go out and do good in the world by any means, but he has to internally admit that Ned Chicane has a way with the words that he writes, as much as he hated the man.

“Uh.. Beacon?”

Beacon looks up, and his vision is blurry. He brings a hand up to wipe at his eyes, and it comes away wet. He feels horrified, and can only imagine his expression mirrors this, as Aubrey laughs a bit.

“I didn’t even know you could do that,” she says.

“Neither did I,” he admits.

She silently holds out the tissue box to him. 

“I do not need your comfort, flesh girl,” Beacon grumbles, though he takes the offer as an excuse to trade the box for the wretched paper in his hand.

“Good, ‘cause I’m not about to start cuddling up to you.”

Beacon makes a disgusted face, and Aubrey laughs again. 

“I am done being kind,” Beacon announces, standing up. “I am going to get a snack like I planned before you caught tears in your eyes.”

“Go get your snack, then, metal boy,” Aubrey shoots back as he walks into the kitchen to raid the fridge.

When he returns to the armchair holding a paper plate of straight roast beef, Aubrey has set the tissues and the letter on the side table.

“Thanks, Beacon,” she says. “You’re pretty nice for an annoying sword.”

“I am not.”

“You so are.”

“Nooo.” Beacon drags the word out, deadpan.

“Yeeees.”

“I have never been kind in my entire existence, and I do not plan to start now.”

“Then you kind of suck at being mean,” Aubrey laughs.

“That cuts deeper than I ever have, Aubrey Little.” Beacon tears a piece of meat apart with his teeth. 

-

  
  


The next morning, Duck Newton exits his room to see Aubrey asleep on the couch as usual, and Beacon, seemingly asleep as well on the armchair. That can’t be comfortable, but Beacon does spend most of his time rolled up, so who’s Duck to say?

Minerva exits the guest room, and her and Duck exchange a look at the sight.

“He can  _ sleep?” _ Duck whisper-yells.

“I am awake, Duck Newton. I just chose not to see whatever... mindless drivel Aubrey Little put on the television.”   
  


Well, that answers that.

Minerva laughs and shakes her head. Beacon stands and makes a point to pop seemingly every bone he has in the process, much to Duck’s annoyance. Which, of course, means it delights Beacon like nothing fucking else. Great.

Duck Newton feels like he’s already spent an eternity living with all these people(?) under the same roof. He hopes it ends soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be Final Arc Shit. ill probably do a separate chapter for the finale because thats a lot of typing to jam into the last arc as an afterthought. SO. two more chapters. i fucking told you guys i was going to get this shit Out Quick


	7. i made several hours of transcripts into a literate format. fucking appreciate it because my brain is dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> final arc! final arc! final arc!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by the way, here's the music ive been listening to while i write https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JGmF9grJiswaihHM05cFB?si=8moiPYbfR0u28g4yAu4HkQ

There is a lot of planning that goes into the Pine Guard’s planned liberation of Mama and Amnesty Lodge. Oh, and also the saving of the world.

Beacon gets to sit out every meeting they have. Normally, he would be vexed by this, but he  _ hates _ strategy meetings, and all he would much rather slice first and make plans later than sit in the Cryptonomica and talk about strategy. He sits on the sidelines and tunes out their planning, unless he is specifically called for.

A new man has taken the place of the third to Duck and Aubrey’s duo. His name is Thacker, apparently, and Beacon has a hard time figuring out how he feels about Thacker. He feels  _ studied _ by him, and it is an unpleasant thing to feel. Thacker doesn’t even seem  _ unnerved _ by Beacon. Nothing he does fazes him, and that, too, is unpleasant. He seethes about this often, but that’s neither here nor there.

This meeting is made more interesting by the return of Indrid Cold, who is currently walking up to Aubrey and Duck.

“Aubrey, Duck, it‘s, uh… it‘s good to see you. I uh… I'm so sorry about Ned. If I had seen that coming, please trust that I would‘ve contacted you earlier,” he apologizes.

“Oh… yeah. Indrid, none of us really… saw it comin‘ either. Um, how are you, man? What did… what of the light?” Duck asks, and Beacon doesn’t have the first clue what he’s talking about.

“Uh, I'm doing well. Not grea- how should I… I'm doing fine now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But if we don‘t do anything else, I'm going to be pretty dead tonight, as will everybody. Hey, uh…” Indrid leans in close, and whispers something to Duck and Aubrey. Beacon disappears into the sword so he can hear him, too.

“- cool?” he catches the end of Indrid’s sentence.

“You mean like, are they a narc?” Aubrey asks.

“I mean, are they  _ cool.” _

Duck grimaces. “Oh, you—oh, my man, I don't know how long you been out the game, but like… everybody knows, now.”

“Yeah.”

Beacon finds this less interesting than he thought he would, and manifests again a few feet away.

After a bit, Indrid Cold turns to the crowd and speaks. “Hey, everyone. I’m the Moth Man.” He takes off his glasses and assumes his Sylvan form before putting them back on. “Uh, I can see the future. This probably isn‘t the weirdest thing that you've seen in the last couple of months. I just wanted to… we have a tendency to just kind of tell people in a trickle, one at a time, and we don‘t have that kind of time. So, Moth Man. Mystic. See the future. Everybody… everybody cool with that?”

The crowd nods solemnly. 

“It’s weird, right?” Duck says.

“Yeah,” Thacker agrees before turning to Indrid. “Nice to meetcha. I’m Thacker. Just.. that’s it.”

“Uh, Thacker. What a wonderful introduction. Uh, rich… rich character, you seem to be.”

“I’m brand new, so y’know, gimme time to uh, to flourish and develop.”

Indrid looks blank for a second before turning to everyone again. “ Okay, I trust that your own home-grown prophets here have given you the general run down. This evening, the Quell is going to burst through the gateway between your worlds and lay siege to earth, and Kepler‘s going to be destroyed, and the rest of the planet will follow in the coming weeks. And if I follow the basics of your plan, you're going to distract the FBI with some… motorbike stunts.”

Duck nods. “Stunts. Yup.”

“Good so far.”

Aubrey crosses her arms. “Y’know, when you say it like that, though…”

“You make it sound silly,” Duck finishes. “Dismissively, you said it.”

“No, it has a decent chance of making it… making it through. Um, then you will sneak into the FBI compound, you will breach the archway, you will confront the Quell, and cease the destruction of both of your worlds. Is that… more or less what we‘re dealing with?” Indrid searches for confirmation.

“Yeah,” Aubrey confirms. “I don’t like when I hear people simplify a plan. It always makes it sound silly.”

  
  
“Yeah, it took us a whole… like an hour to come up with it. And um, did you get the part where we‘re gonna find the Quail, and just crush its heart, or whatever? Like, destroy its egg or whatever it lives?”

Beacon slowly puts his head in his hands.

“Its  _ Quell, _ champ,” Thacker corrects.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Quail.”

Suddenly, Beacon is reminded of why he usually tunes out these fucking meetings, because they then spend several minutes confusedly arguing over whether its  _ Quell _ or  _ Quail _ because no one can pick up a  _ pen _ with their stupid ape hands and write it out, apparently. 

Just as Beacon is about to start screeching, Indrid grabs Duck’s wrist and checks his watch. 

“Boy howdy, I sure hope that those aren‘t several minutes that we will need to prevent the apocalypse, because they are gone now. I came here to tell you, there‘s a problem with your plan, and the problem is that it will fail, and-”

“‘Cause it’s too good?” Aubrey grins.

“- Everyone will die. No, it‘s not that, Aubrey. The Quell is a tangible thing, and right now, it‘s using everything under its power to try and knock down the door leading to your world. Think of it like, uh, pressure squeezing against the hull of a submarine.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“If you open the hatch, the main… I don't know that much about submarines, actually, so this is not-”

“So why did you invoke submarines?”

Beacon makes a low, annoyed sound before disappearing back into the sword. He doesn’t care about their plan, or who gets recruited, or  _ whatever. _ He just wants to do his job, and that’s slicing and making sure that his Chosen and Minerva don’t die. So, he tunes out their words again.

-

The next time Beacon is drawn, it is one of the few times he can say surely that he did not enjoy it.

As much as Beacon loves being put to work, loves senseless violence for the sake of violence- this was… well, it was a  _ mercy killing. _ Beacon  _ hates _ mercy killings.

Billy(Beacon thinks that was its name) dissolves around him the minute he is used. The controller he was holding clatters to the ground, and then a four-armed humanoid figure appears in the chair. It stands, and approaches Duck, and then it bows.

“Hey, um…” Duck starts. “ I… I saw you're pretty deep in. Just so you know, you won't be… able to finish, but it turns out that um, Aerith is fine. It was a big, uh, scam, and she comes back at the end. She‘s fine. I just didn‘t want you to, um… y'know, worry.”

Billy starts disintegrating, and he raises an arm and places it on Duck’s cheek before he disappears entirely.

Duck sits in that room for a while, and for once, Beacon is silent.

-

Beacon has been  _ waiting _ to threaten one of these stupid government workers, and the perfect opportunity presents itself when one of them stands up and starts walking somewhere else while Duck Newton is talking.

He appears in front of them, waving, and they stop, blink a couple times before turning back around only to be greeted by Duck holding Beacon’s blade to their throat.

“Hey, bud,” Duck says. “We got some things to do tonight, alright? You don‘t know me, and I wouldn‘t kill any of you.”

“But  _ I-” _

“You hear that? He’s not gonna kill us!” one of the workers interrupts Beacon.

“Let’s get out of here!” another suggests.

Beacon rolls his eyes, and his arms morph to something a bit more comfortably sharp(well, comfortable for Beacon). “But  _ I,  _ Duck Newton, would thrill at the idea of slicing-”

“That dude has sword arms! What the fuck!”

  
“Yes, I do. Yes, flesh bag, take your  _ seat.” _

The person sits back down, both to Beacon’s delight and disappointment.

Aubrey steps in. “Hey, you all seem nice. I'm betting you don‘t want to fight us. We don‘t want to fight you. His sword is also a guy. I can do real ass magic.”

“It‘s true. So let‘s- I'm bad at lying, so let‘s just, uh, go for it. What are y‘all doin‘? Let‘s start there. Anybody answers. Anybody wants to answer, just go for it. What are y‘all up to?” Duck asks.

No one seems inclined to respond.

Duck sighs. “Okay, well, listen. I'm a human being. I don‘t want to hurt anybody. But my sword here-” he gestures to Beacon. “-loves this game called fingers and toes, and he‘s just gonna start takin‘ em, and I can live with that, ‘cause we got a lot on the line. Uh, and I'll let him have… well, let‘s start with one finger, and then we‘ll just kind of go from there. So, who wants to volunteer? Who‘s not a big tennis buff that can spare a pinky?”

Beacon drags his arm blades across each other with a grin.

“Yo, listen. Okay, I know y‘all don‘t know me very well. And I know we’re threatenin‘ a lot of stuff that sounds like a lot of macho bullshit. Um, just a quick check, though, with my compatriots who know me a little better than you all… am I lying right now?”

“Oh no, you’d know. You’d know if he was lying,” Aubrey says.

“I’m goin’ from the gut,” Thacker adds. “This seems to be you being honest.”

Beacon keeps sharpening his already sharp blades.  _ “I _ think it’s  _ my _ honesty you should all be worrying about, but Duck Newton tells the truth.”

“Yeah, this is a legitimate situation we got goin‘. And we honestly are running out of time. So, uh, I'm gonna… “

The guy Beacon had convinced to sit down stands and runs for the alarm, and Thacker almost immediately throws his stick at him, impaling him through the hand and pinning him to the wall. It almost makes Beacon take back his dislike for the man. Almost.

The worker screams. “What the fuck, why- oww, my god, this hurts really bad!”

“I’m tellin’ you all, we’re not- we’re not fucking with you!” Duck shouts. “I'm serious! We‘re not fucking around! This is end of the world shit! I've done the train problem, y'know what I mean? The truck—the trolley problem. I can run the numbers here, guys. You gotta help me out.”

“And to be honest, I was aimin’ for your head,” Thacker says.

“Do I take- Do I take it out or leave it there?” the worker asks, panicked. “I’m not-”

“Oh, take it out. I’m gonna need it later.”

One of Beacon’s arms morphs back to normal as he stifles a laugh with his hand.

“But is that bad or good? Is it holding my blood in, or what’s up?”

Duck sighs again. “I always forget that. Yellow on black, leave it in, red on black… I can never remember.”   
  


Beacon rolls his eyes and marches over to the worker, jerking the stick out of his hand and giving it to Thacker. The worker faints almost immediately. 

As Aubrey heals the man, Duck turns back to the rest of the workers. “Alright, while my friend‘s tending to that, um… does anybody else want to talk? ‘Cause I feel like we got even less time than before.”

A woman wearing glasses stands. “I- I- I- what do you- what do you want to know? What‘s end of the world stuff? What‘s going on? Is there something happening with the door?”

“No, Geraldo, I'm not- I'm not answering questions here. You're gonna tell me, what are you doing? Come on.”

Beacon waves his other, still sharp arm as incentive.

“We- we were brought here by the Bureau of Unexplained Phenomena, and we were brought here to study this archway after some cataclysmic event that happened here in Kepler, and we haven‘t really learned anything. It hasn't opened up. But we've been trying to study, like, the patterns of energy that it‘s been giving off, and-”

“Great. Okay, that‘s way too much,” Duck interrupts. “That‘s plenty. Um, where is, uh… Mama?”

“Who?”

“The woman that was being interrogated?” Aubrey specifies.

“Are you talking about Ms. Cobb?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Ms. Cobb. Where’s she at?” Duck asks again.

“She was in a, uh- there was like, a holding room that they were keeping here in. She‘s been in there for… way longer than I think they‘re allowed to keep people, but… she‘s in there. It‘s just back through that door to the left. Can we please go?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. The four of you need to, uh, get as far as you can,” Aubrey says. “Because like, a planet-devouring evil is about to like, bust through the door. So you're gonna want to be like… distant.”

“Yeah, none of y’all are wizards or anything, right?”

Aubrey snaps. “Oh, that's a good question! Can any of you fight? ‘Cause if so, maybe stay.”

“Maybe it won’t be that bad,” Duck sarcastically adds, laughing. 

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“Better than gettin’ stuck in the hand,” Thacker points out.

Duck nods. “Yeah. That- that dude should go, though. That dude is cash.”

“You need to get to the hospital,” Aubrey agrees.

The bespectacled woman looks confusedly between the three as they talk. “I LARP sometimes, but I think this is probably gonna be a little bit heavier than that…”

“Ehh… yeah. Yeah. That‘s cool, though. Where do you do- is that a local group, or what‘s…”

“Duck  _ Newton,” _ Beacon hisses just as Aubrey says, “Hey, we can exchange information later. Uh, everybody get the fuck out.”.

Two of the other workers pick up the one that got speared, and they and the woman leave the room.

Dr. Drake, who had been typing at one of the computers, speaks up. “Alright, uh… I got into the, um… I got in the-”

“Mainframe?” Aubrey suggests.

“Yeah, I hacked into the FBI mainframe- no. It‘s just like the facility‘s op system. I got in there. Uh, there‘s not a map or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure I can get you through whatever doors you need to get through, but I gotta stay… I gotta stay here to do it. Um… do we have like- can we telepathically speak or something? What‘s the deal with that, Duck?”

“I mean, we got walkie talkies,” Duck says.

“That is good. I forgot about… yes.”

“Yeah. Y'know, it‘s alright. You get caught up in the wizardry and all that stuff, but yeah, we‘ll just use regular communication devices.”

“Alright, well, I'm gonna go ahead and lock every other door in the facility, except the ones y‘all need to move through, so hopefully, we can limit the sort of uncomfortable discussions like the one we just had.”

“I don’t know, I thought we made some new friends,” Aubrey says.

“It‘s… yeah, we‘ll see about that later. We‘ll see how many, uh, y'know, hits on FB we get after we get out of here. Um… but uh, yeah. And also, I guess, if all y‘all die, I can be sort of like, last bastion of hope for humanity out here in the entryway. I got this battle axe that I guess I can use, so um… this should be- this should be good. This is a good plan.”

Aubrey and Duck make various noises of affirmation.

“Now, I can’t tell if she’s bein’ sarcastic or not,” Thacker says.

“No one can,” Aubrey responds.

“Almost always, yeah. Constant. It‘s like a constant stream. I actually- I haven‘t been sincere about anything since like, 2004. So…”

Aubrey snorts. “That’s when sincerity died.”

“I have a rough idea of where Mama is from my psychic stuff, so… follow me!” Thacker says, gesturing for everyone to follow as he heads off.

“Cool. So we  _ do _ have psychic stu- oh, just him. Okay. Bye.” Sarah shrugs, waving them off.

-

Beacon ignores the return of both Agent Stern and Mama. He’s not here for  _ reunions, _ he’s here for  _ battle. _ So, he cannot ignore when a thick fog surrounds Duck, Aubrey, and Thacker, obscuring their view anywhere past a few feet in front of them.

There is a voice that shouts from far away, warning them of a centipede, and then Aubrey, closer, shouts, “Duck, look out! Giant centipede, two o’clock!”

Duck pulls out Beacon. “Best of luck, partner. I don't know, bud. Just do your best in there, alright?” he says before burying Beacon in the thing’s midsection. It screams, and Beacon basks in the sound and its blood.

It writhes in pain on the floor, new legs appearing from its wound. One of them whips and catches Duck across the face, though it doesn’t seem to do any real damage.

“God damn it!” Duck exclaims anyways.

The shadow of Thacker stabs through the creature, and Aubrey’s fire shines through the fog as she chars it until it splatters across the floor. 

The fog rolls away in a radius as the centipede falls, revealing Agent Stern with his rifle, and Janelle and Mama similarly getting their bearings.

“ Didja- did you all- you all took care of it, then? You all-”

“Yep, it‘s dead. It‘s dead. Put the gun down. Stern. Gun down, please,” Aubrey says.

Stern lowers his gun.

“Thank youuu.”

-

When they are finally through the archway and in Sylvain, there are shadows through the fog, moving animalistically. More victims of the Quell, assumably. 

As Duck collects his surroundings, he notices that a pile of what he thought was normal armor at the palace door is getting up and slowly moving towards Janelle as she investigates the padlock that locks the gate into the palace. 

Duck uncoils Beacon, and he manifests just in the armored shadows line of sight, whistling to catch its attention. As Beacon’s blade whips and wraps around the thing’s leg, Beacon grins.

“Have a nice  _ trip.” _

Duck pulls, and the thing falls to the ground with a loud clang of its armor.

“Eat my whole ass,” Beacon boasts, slamming his heel down onto the monster's helmet.

He cackles and disappears as the thing starts to stand and grab for him, leaving it to turn towards Duck instead.

Recognition flashes in Duck’s eyes as he realizes that the figure inside the armor is Vincent.

-

Beacon is drawn next to face some vines, and he didn’t really pay attention to why they were there or why they were a foe, but it doesn’t really matter to Beacon, since it has been so long since he has been able to truly  _ brutalize _ something. He is a blur as Duck swings him, hacking away at the vines until they fall away from the platform they were holding.

“Looks like that time… Sword Man had the edge,” Duck says. “Guys, I’m thinking about Sword Man.”   
  
Beacon manifests just to laugh at him.

“How’s that? Is that anything?”

  
  
Aubrey stifles a laugh of her own. “Uhh, it’s close.”

Thacker’s voice from in the pit yells, “Swordmaaaaaan!”

Janelle and Alexandra on their platform step back as the edge collapses under the weight of an attacking tentacle.

“I know you haven’t known Thacker all that long,” Janelle says, turning towards the three of them. “I haven’t either, but, um… should we trust him?”

“Oh, with the jumping?” Aubrey seems to think on this. “Um, y'know, it‘s pretty shitty up here, and… it‘s probably a little shittier down there, but… it‘s just gonna get shittier up here, so… yeah!” With that, she jumps down into the pit as well.

Janelle and Alexandra follow after her, and then it is just Duck, Vincent, and Beacon on the platform.

“Um… someone should stay up here and defend the elevator… I think,” Vincent says.

“Are you volunteerin‘, or did you- were you hopin‘ I would, or…”

“I'm just saying, they could get up the elevator and hurt all the people up in the castle, and so, I'm gonna… I'm gonna protect the survivors.” Vincent stands on the elevator and strikes a combat pose with his spear. “And uh… you've got an appointment, I think, at the center of the world. So um… good luck, Duck.”

“Yeah, you kind of volunteered me to jump off the elevator, huh?”

“I wish you the luck of the ancients, Duck.”

“That’s- that’s nothing,” Duck says. “But listen-”

“I wish you the luck of the… stars,” Vincent tries again as he strikes down some birds that swoop at him. “Okay, uh, this is fun, but uh… it‘s pretty bad up here, so…”

“You don’t have to…  _ goat _ me into it.”

Beacon shoves Duck off the edge for that before he throws himself off, as well, cheering and laughing on the way down.

As the scenery changes around them, Duck and Beacon catch sight of the rest of their party below them. Aubrey waves.

Suddenly, some of the monsters that had been startled by their actions started to fly at them. Beacon twisted and readied himself to deal with some midair combat, but before he got the opportunity, a giant cat’s paw crashed through the wall of the cavern and disintegrated the monsters before catching all of them effortlessly.

“Who’s a good booooy!” Aubrey croons.

Heathcliff laughs. “Y’know, I don’t like that, but right now, Aubrey… it’s me.”

“Yes you are!”

Heathcliff takes them to the temple and deposits them in front of it, preening as he speaks.

“Boy, you all just… y‘all have to come up with better plans than that. You just- you just jumped into a jagged, craggy cavern! Were you at least thinking happy thoughts?”

“Well, my mom always said, ‘If your friend jumped into a smoky cavern, would you?’ And it turns out, yes,” Aubrey jokes.

Thacker adopts a look of mock-offense. “So it all comes down to peer pressure.”

The two of them argue back and forth for a bit until Heathcliff speaks up again. “You know I'm going to make you pay for this, right? Not in like an intimidating way, but monetarily speaking.”

There is more conversation as they enter the temple. Aubrey warns that she is going to “take a moment of Aubrey time”, warns Alexandra not to think any thoughts at her, and lets the chaos of Duck Newton trying to get an answer to a riddle ensue as she walks away.

“What is invisible…”

“Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Thacker interrupts.

“It’s- no, listen. It‘s invisible. And it doesn‘t- you can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. But if you put it in a barrel, it‘ll make the barrel lighter.”

Beacon opens his mouth, and Duck holds a hand up. “No, you’re like, hundreds of years old, you know the answer.”

“Helium,” Thacker answers enthusiastically. “Helium. It’s helium.”

“That’s incorrect,” Duck says.

Thacker continues to spout wrong answers as Aubrey meditates in the corner.

-

“It‘s a hole! A fuckin‘ hole! If you put a hole in the barrel… somebody give me a fuckin‘ stick so I can draw on the fuckin‘ dirt! If you put a hole in the barrel, the barrel gets light! You can't put gas in the barrel, doesn‘t make any fuckin‘ sense! Put a hole in the goddamn barrel, Thacker!” Duck shouts frustratedly as Beacon cackles behind him.

“Ohh! A  _ hole!”  _ Thacker makes a face of realization.

“Yeah!”

“Okay, alright!”

“A hole! Jesus Christ!”

“No, no, I-” Thacker laughs. “I… yeah! Well, when you say it like ‘at, it makes perfect sense. I understand completely.”

“When I say it like  _ that,” _ Duck grumbles.

“Put a hole in the barrel. Does it matter how big the hole is? Could it be a little hole?”

“Fucking go. Seriously. Don’t. Beacon, get him.”

Beacon keeps laughing as he fakes swiping at Thacker, and laughs harder when he jumps back.

He suddenly seems contemplative, and he turns to Duck. “Duck Newton.”

“Yeah, Beacon?”

“Can you take me over there? It is just out of my radius.” He points to where Aubrey is standing, coming out of her meditation.

Duck squints suspiciously. “Why?”   
  


“I need to do something, Duck Newton. Do not question me.”

“You swear it’s somethin’ real?”

Beacon sighs. “Yes, I  _ promise _ that it is something real.”

Duck shrugs and walks over to Aubrey’s meditation spot, Beacon’s blade in his hand.

“Oh, your turn?” Aubrey says. “Okay!”

Duck stands in silence for a moment before Beacon speaks.

“Dear sword Jesus. It’s been so long since I-”

“Oh, fuckin‘- you promised me you had something real! Never mind! Sorry, guys, he said he had a real thing he had to do. I didn‘t realize he was just bein‘ a dipshit.”

Beacon cackles again. “You are a fool, Duck.”

As they all make jokes, Janelle is studying the temple, and as she steps to the pond, the ground shifts to meet her. She walks across the pond to a well in the ground.

“Oh, you‘ve… you‘ve found it,” Heathcliff says. “Okay. Well, I'm sorry. I should‘ve told you about that. Part of me hoped that I could still like, continue wheezing the juice, as it were. But um, yes, that‘s… that is where it is.”

Janelle looks annoyed. She sighs. “This is, um… this is a door. Or, it‘s a well, to be precise, that goes straight to the core. A straight shot. No… no resistance. This will get you there, if…” she turns to Aubrey. “If you are ready to face what you will meet.”

“Sure,” Aubrey says casually. “That did- I know that didn‘t sound very definite, but like, yeah, okay. If you had asked me yesterday? Probably no. But… here we are. And so… yeah. Sure.”

Thacker clears his throat. “Were you askin‘ all of us, or just…”

Janelle sighs again. “Duck, Thacker.. are you ready?”

“I mean, I'm damn near impervious, so… I feel like, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?” Duck shrugs.

“And I'm real old, and I really have been countin‘ on, y'know, us not survivin‘ this anyway, so… yeah, what the hell?” Thacker agrees similarly.

Heathcliff speaks up again. “Um, just a heads up- gravity starts to fail, um, the closer you get down there. It‘s gonna feel super weird, actually, but um-”

“Oh, cool!” Aubrey exclaims.

“Yeah, it should keep you from just splattering against whatever‘s down there.”

“Yeah, I was gonna say,” Duck laughs. “We’re gonna need gravity to fail.

“Yeah.”

“Or we’re gonna fail.”

They all step onto the plate, and Janelle speaks. “I will shut the door behind you to ensure that the Quell does not invade this sacred place. I… Aubrey, I don‘t…” she sighs. “I have loved Sylvain as… as all of us do. All of us on this planet. As all of us are born doing. But I… uh, I care for you, Aubrey. Not just the goddess that shares your form, but for you, child. So please come home safe.”

“Oh, okay. Now that you've said something, I was just gonna die, but now… no, of course I will, Janelle. Of course. Come on.” Aubrey responds sarcastically.

“I know I shouldn‘t be saying this to the divine heart of my planet, but you can be a real butt sometimes.”

Aubrey laughs. “I know, buddy. I know.”

Janelle raises her hand, and lines begin to form in the plate below the four of them. They lift up slowly, and the diamond platform rotates away in quarters to make a ring around them, rotating faster and faster until they are all shot downwards as if from a cannon.

-

There are dozens of islands all around their own, and on the horizon, there is the Quell.

“I’m Sylvain!” Aubrey calls to it. “Hi!”

Beacon blinks a couple times at this, and looks to Duck for explanation.

“Kind of a new development,” Duck says with a shrug, which means that he knows nothing other than the fact that it is a fact.

The sphere that is the Quell rolls and reveals an eye that sucks in a nearby island, and suddenly, a red tendril is shooting out towards their own island, catching it and dragging it into the center of the chamber.

“So, you’ve returned,” says a voice in Beacon’s ear, and as he looks around, it seems everyone else has heard it as well, so he decidedly doesn’t respond.

“Yes?” Aubrey says.

“I think she’s talkin’ to me, Sparky,” Thacker corrects.

“Indeed.” The Quell stutters robotically for a moment. “I was not addressing you, Aubrey Little. You refused to free me in the basement. You will be punished for that. How did you elude me, Arlo Thacker?”

“Well, the last time, I kind of just give into ya. I just kind of let you do that… magic that you do, and I didn‘t fight ya, and kind of rolled with the punches. Kind of opened myself up to ya. You ‘member, before, I told‘ja- if there‘s any way to avoid us havin‘ to slug it out, I… I think we oughta try to do that.”

“It is nice to have you back, even now, at the end.” The robotic noise plays again before the eye turns to Aubrey. 

“I- um, I'm sorry. You probably didn‘t hear me before, ‘cause I was a little far away. But I'm Sylvain, so there‘s no need for the end,” she says.

Tendrils whip at Aubrey, and she dodges all but two.

“This is heresy,” the Quell says simply, before turning to Duck and Beacon. “... I do not know these ones.”

“Uh, yeah. I'm the only one you don‘t have a history with, huh?” He laughs. “Y'know, you're probably wonderin‘ why I'm here, and uh… yeah, I mean, I can wonder the same thing, honestly. Uh, but um… I guess we‘re just tryin‘a get things a little calm. Seems like both our worlds are gettin‘ torn apart, and we‘re just hopin‘ that you'll, uh… kind of pump the brakes a little bit.”

The eye unfocuses from all of them and opens wider, pulling their island closer. “It is… centuries too late for us to find peace. I tried to warn you. You should‘ve stayed where you were, to perish with the rest of them.”

Aubrey closes her eyes and seems to enter another meditative state, the eye focusing in on her as she does. There is heat emanating off of the eye, enough to affect Duck and Thacker, but Aubrey seems to not respond to it.

Thacker seems to do a similarly magicky thing, and so Duck decides to talk to the giant eye.

“Hey, I know you don‘t know me from Adam up there, ego. But uh… can you just like, calm down? What is the rush right now? I'm- I'll be honest with you, man.” He laughs. “I'm barely hangin‘ in there, in terms of comprehension, alright? I'm a forest ranger by trade. I'm extremely out of my depth. Can you just like, walk me through what you are pissed off about right now? Maybe you're right. That‘s something we learned in the- we had to take a conflict mediation class last year, and it used up half my damn day, and I was pretty pissed at the time. But I did learn, like, sometimes it‘s just about… like, fuckin‘ listenin‘, y'know what I mean? Like, where are you at right now? Maybe you're right. I have no clue.”

He pauses. “Oh. My name’s Duck, by the way. It’s a nickname.”

“Duck. I do not need a reason to destroy, Duck. I am destruction, Duck,” the Quell responds.

Tendrils start to whip out towards Duck, and Beacon takes up a defensive stance.

“Now, wait a minute. Hold on. If you kill me, I can't tell you my real name. I know you're curious. You're curious, aren‘t you, you big, crazy planet?” Duck tries.

As he says this, another island comes in and collides with theirs, sending all four of them flying into the orbit of the Quell as the island shatters.

The Quell turns to Aubrey Little again, and studies her for a long while. “Interesting. Aubrey Little, I did not know. The guilt that you have carried with you since that night must be… unbearable. You harbor such hatred, and such shame. I can take that away.”

Thacker closes his eyes again, seemingly doing another psychic thing. 

“Beacon, I’m gonna need you in the sword for a sec,” Duck advises.

Beacon nods and disappears, and Duck whips the blade around a passing log. As he spins, Beacon pulls back, and they send the log flying towards the Quell. It spear into the thing, sending a sharp ripple through the once flawless sphere. 

“Now, see, you see, now, this is why it‘s so important in a conflict to keep focused on everybody else‘s needs. ‘Cause if you had been focused on  _ my _ need right then, you would‘ve totally seen that big, stupid log comin‘ at your dumb ass!” Duck shouts, triumphant.

The Quell turns, furious, to Duck, just as Thacker chucks his spiked stick at it. It turns to Thacker, then, almost comical in how it's being distracted, and it reaches out with red tendrils and wraps Thacker in them. It starts to pull him in, closer and closer towards the center of the eye.

And then Aubrey opens her eyes, and she is a bright, orange flame, and she speaks, her voice echoing unnaturally throughout the chamber.

_ “I don’t think you heard me. I said: I. Am. Sylvain.” _

Duck and Thacker go flying, and all they see is a bright light before everything goes silent.

-

When their senses return, they find that they are no longer spinning violently around the Quell. They still float in the air, and in front of them is Sylvain, with Alexandra at her side. She looks to them and flashes a big grin as pieces of rock come together and form another island beneath them.

“H-hello, your… planet.. ship,” Aubrey says, dumbfounded.

Duck takes a knee, holding Beacon in front of him in a knightly pose, and Beacon manifests because he does not want to have anything to do with  _ that. _ He crosses his arms, standing casually behind Duck.

Thacker looks awe-struck.

“Oh, gosh, none of that’s necessary,” Sylvain grimaces as she speaks through Alexandra. “Oh, gosh. Uh, I mean, thank- thank you. And it‘s… it‘s really good to see the three- four? Of you alive and well. I don't know what- thank you, obviously.”

“You’re welcome,” Aubrey shoots back. “How about that? Yeahhhh, huh?”

“So, uh… Aubrey, what is this… what does this mean for us?” Alexandra says.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Aubrey jokes.

“No, you- Aubrey, you've never known a life without my presence dwelling within you. But you've… you've finally brought me home. So what‘s… what‘s next?”

Beacon tunes the rest of the conversation out. Everyone else may be dumb with awe over this planet god, but Beacon couldn’t care less as long as they’re all still alive to keep fighting.

Light fills the chamber after a while, and then everything falls away.

-

When Duck Newton wakes up outside the archway to Sylvain, he seems panicked. Urgent. He ignores Minerva’s greeting.

“We’re out of time,” he says as Minerva helps him up. “We got 128 seconds.”

Minerva nods. “What do we do?”

“We gotta close the gate.”

“I’ll clear the way.”

Minerva begins charging, making a line for Duck as he picks Beacon up off the grass and shouts for anyone available to help. He and a small group panickedly yell about what they should do, until Duck has a genius idea.

“You guys ever tried C4?”

-

They are all taking cover, now, Duck crouching next to Minerva as they wait for the explosives to go off. Beacon is manifested close by.

Minerva puts a hand on Duck’s shoulder, and grins, looking to Beacon and then to him.

“We are with you to the end, Duck Newton!”

Duck leans close to her, and Beacon can tell that he  _ means _ to whisper, but the commotion means that it doesn’t end up that way, so he hears exactly what Duck says.

“You can call me Wayne.”

As Aubrey sets off the explosives, Beacon vows to relentlessly make fun of him for that the very next opportunity he gets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new drinking game take a shot every time i have beacon stop listening because i dont want to keep typing out hours worth of transcripts  
> EDIT: its been a couple days and i know im slowing down a bit from my original super fast upload schedule. i've been a bit stressed with schoolwork and my ap test tomorrow(5/19) so ive been slow on the writing, but i swear that its in progress and it Will be uploaded. i WILL finish this fic damn it it will happen


	8. stream (its a) departure by the long winters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no seriously. its familiar, but not too familiar. but not too not familiar.
> 
> some may even say it's a new craze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i Did retcon a couple Shitty Duck Rolls because let duck fuck shit up 2020. that is all

“I am not _computers,_ Duck Newton! I come from a faraway place, you’re not ready quite yet to understand that. But you must understand, Duck Newton, and this will be difficult news to hear- your world is imperilled, Duck Newton. It is besieged by a supernatural threat that would spell certain doom for not just your planet, but for two planets that have found themselves linked by destiny itself. Even now, horrific abominations march on your world, threatening to destroy the lives of your neighbours, friends, and loved ones without hesitation or remorse. The forces your world has assembled to defend itself will prove insufficient to see to this threat. You have been called, Duck Newton, to do what they cannot.”

“What’s that?”

“To f- to fight them.”

“... Yeah.”

“Do not fear fighting them, though, Duck Newton. You will be imbued with the strength of ancients to see to this task. Outfitted with the mightiest armaments in existence, and trained by one of the greatest warriors this universe has ever known, which is me.”

Minerva extends her hand.

“... Yeah, I got _class_ tomorrow, though.”

-

“Hey, Sarah, I'm kinda freakin‘ out a little bit. Please don‘t tell anybody, but I can‘t cut this fuckin‘ frog, man.”

Sarah snorts. “Well, if you’re buggin’ that badly, Duck.” She grabs the scalpel from him and slices into the frog, and Duck Newton looks like he’s going to be sick.

-

Juno Divine smiles at a nervous-looking Duck as she checks over his papers. “Welcome to the West Virginia Forest Service. Wayne...” She laughs. “Wayne Newton? Is that- that can’t be real.”

Duck grimaces. “Yeah, it’s real. I, uh- I go by Duck, though. It’s a nickname.”

“Well, then. Welcome aboard, Duck,” Juno says, and extends her hand.

Duck takes it.

-

Duck Newton is not the most heroic of men.

He’s known this since he was eighteen years old, maybe even earlier, and no amount of weird alien shit is going to convince him otherwise. There’s tons of other people who could save the world better than Duck Newton could.

But Duck Newton has one thing he tries his darndest to save, and that’s the Monongahela Fuckin’ State Forest, damn it.

So when he pulls up in his Forest Service truck to see that whoever’s at this campsite has decided to build a giant fire in the middle of dry season- well, he isn’t too happy.

Duck approaches the young woman. “Right, so you don’t mind-”

The woman jumps, holding onto the rabbit in her lap for dear life. “Oh, god! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Yeah, well, you probably scared the shit out of a lot of flora and fauna, my friend.”

“Wha… I-”

“Hey, maybe this looks like a Jerry Lee Lewis concert, but it ain't. You gotta be a little bit more careful with fire.”

“Jerry Lee Lewis?” The woman asks, incredulous. “How old _are_ you?”

“He’s like an entertainment icon,” Duck defends. “Jerry Lee Lewis.”

“No, I know who Jerry Lee Lewis is, but like, that‘s your pull?”

“I just- he set the piano- I̶̗̥̳̟̰̗̱̫̣̬̙̲̒̍͊̍̊̇̍̅͜͜͠ͅ ̸̧̨̣͖̪̩̰͕̰͓̹̝̭̖̃͑̽͑̐͛̾͂̓͘͘͝d̵̢̡̙̖͖̥̖̺͉̱̠̱̹͇̅͠͠o̷̳̘͗̄͊͒̀͗͛̏͂̇͘ṅ̷̪̘̱̆͘͝'̴̢̳͍͎̩̳̼̙͉̟̣͚̳̝̂̽̎̍̈́̀͂̄̆̊̍́̍͝t̵͖͔̹̭͗̎̀̎̈̑ ̴̢̢̡̢͚͕̲̭̺̋ͅn̷̹̳̠͕̭̟͖͓͕̭̤͓̱͈̈́̈́͂́̔͂̅̔̂̈́͒͝͝ę̷̛͍̩͖͚̘̙͓͖̎̏͠ḙ̸̗͙̟̜͖̈́̄̑ḍ̵̛̙̮̼̜̼̳̀͑̄̓̉̎̌̅̎̏̊͜͝ ̶̧̫̳̹͓̺͇̠̮̭̻̇̇̀̍͆͂̑̉͛́̍̓ṯ̸̢͎̰͔͍̞͚͓̟̄̈͝ǫ̴̮̊̏̓̍̈́̎̊̑̕͠ͅ justify myself to you. You're the arsonist here. I- I'm the one getting the caller.”

“I’m- I am not an arsonist.”

“So where did the fire come from?” Duck crosses his arms over his chest.

“No, I started a fire, but I'm out in the woods camping, and when you camp, you start a fire.”

“Okay, so you’re the arsonist.”

“I am not an arsonist! I’m a camper!”

“We’re talking about questions of scale.”

As this conversation goes on, the edges of Duck Newton’s vision blur a bit. There is a new figure, between him and the woman. And as his eyes focus and he sees Beacon, he realizes that this is not how this happened.

He starts looking around frantically, and he notices that the rest of the world is just going on without his presence in the memory. He looks back to Beacon.

  
“‘Ey, what are you- what are you doing here?”

Beacon smiles, and suddenly in his humanoid form’s place is the blade, still grinning and floating towards Duck. He hesitantly takes hold of the hilt, and feels that the blade has been stuck into something solid where there should only be air. 

And suddenly, the memory vanishes, leaving him in a sort of sarcophagus, lit warmly and seeming to catalogue the memory he’d just relived for the shortest of moments before red text flashes, and then everything shuts down. The sarcophagus pops like a bubble, and Duck is expelled onto the cold ground.

“‘Ey, Beacon, you… you there? You still with me?” he asks as he looks around the laboratory he’s found himself in.

“Yes…” says Beacon’s voice from behind him. _“Waaaaynnnne.”_

Duck shakes his head as he turns to face him, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Alright, man. That‘s the only one, I'm dipping you in chocolate. You fuckin‘ got me?”

“Yes, of course,” Beacon says, stifling laughter. _“Waaaaynnnnne.”_

“Hey, I don‘t want to… I don‘t want to panic you, my friend. But I think you and I have found ourselves…” Duck pauses. “Aboard an alien craft. Fuckin‘ nailed it, dude! What did I tell you? I told everybody! Aliens, baby! The whole time! Aliens!”

Beacon gives him an unimpressed look.

“Alright, but you got any ideas of how to get them out?” Duck gestures to the other pods. “‘Cause I'm assumin‘ this is our crew, but I don‘t… I mean, I don't know enough about this kind of… alien technology. Genetically speaking, I may now be predisposed to interacting with the various machinations of an alien craft.”

“Well, given how _you_ got out _…”_ Beacon makes a stabbing motion.

“You think you can…” He sighs. “You think you can make that work from the outside without severin‘ anything too important in there?

“Yes,” Beacon says shortly.

Duck gives him a look that says he _doesn’t_ believe that.

Beacon rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. _“Absolutely._ Yes. Nothing _major,_ of course. It’ll be seamless, Duck.”

“Hey, I really appreciate you-”

“Oh, I’m sorry… _Waaaaynnne!”_ He cackles. “I forgot! That will be the last time. Allow me.” He motions for Duck to step aside and approaches one of the pods, morphing one of his arms and stabbing through. It pops almost immediately, and Beacon very decidedly steps back as Aubrey falls out of it.

“Oh!” she says, blinking a few times. “Oh.”

“Welcome to the outer reaches of space!” Duck greets her.

“What the fuck, Duck?”

“Yeah, man, I blew us into space! Well, you blew us into space, technically, right?”

“No, we-” Aubrey’s face turns serious. “Hey. _We_ blew us into space.”

Duck grins. “We blew- high five.”

They high five, and Beacon snorts, shaking his head.

“We’re gonna keep cuttin‘ people out, so you start that noodle‘a turnin‘. But I think we‘re pretty well fucked,” Duck laughs.

“Cool. Um… I'm just glad we‘re not dead, frankly. I thought what we were seeing was like- y'know when your life, like, flashes before your eyes? Like, I was like, this is the explosion, and we‘re about to die… uh, welp. It‘s been a good run. Those were kind of my thoughts overall. Still hungry. Still haven‘t eaten.”

“Aubrey, we‘re either alive, or… and I shudder to even say it aloud… we find ourselves in space hell, man.”

“Oh, no- well, maybe it’s space purgatory,” Aubrey suggests.

“It could be space purgatory,” Duck agrees. “It’s a fine point.”

Aubrey laughs. “But as long as we agree it’s not space heaven.”

“I already said that I‘m gettin‘ people out. You can look at it. It‘s clearly not space heaven.”

Beacon snaps his fingers. “The _pods,_ Super Meat Boy,” he says as he pops another one and lets Thacker fall to the ground.

“Woah!” he exclaims, laughing. “Alright. What’s- what’s this fresh hell?”

“It might be hell,” Aubrey says as she starts searching for something. “It might be purgatory. Haven’t decided.”

“I’m leaning towards alien craft, but… I’m biased,” Duck says.

“Aw, shit, I should‘a… y'know what? I owe Eugene $25, ‘cause he said that whole alien abduction thing, and I said he was full‘a shit…” Thacker sighs. “That whole dog, and they took ‘im, and…”

“Naw, naw, naw, I've heard about that, too. Everybody knows. That one was a confirmed sighting. I think even the scientists have said that that one‘s confirmed.”

“Well…”

“That was confirmed contact.”

“I should‘ve not bet him at all. Alright, how do we get out‘a this one?”

“Uh, let me get the only person who might have a single fuckin’ clue.”

Duck moves to start getting people out of their pods as well as Thacker pulls out a notebook and starts scribbling furiously.

Minerva comes out of the next one. Duck steps to catch her if she falls, but she rights herself just fine.

“So, tell me, Wayne Newton. Have I finally found myself in that great battleground in the sky?”

“Y'know, you can just…” Duck sighs. “Yeah. I guess I- eh. Yeah, no, you're alive. I'm burying the lead. I should say that before we quibble about nomenclature, eh?” He laughs. “Um, no, uh, yeah, you're alive. You're, uh, aboard an alien craft, hurdling through the galaxy, uh, passing, I'm assuming, through our solar system and into the inky blackness beyond, where our only horizon is adventure.”

“That is one theory, Wayne Newton,” Minerva nods, though her tone says she doesn’t agree.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Uh, I suspect we stand on the world inside of the archway. The world of light that we‘ve encountered several times before, Wayne. But I… I like your theory as well.”

Duck groans, sliding a hand down his face. “Well-” he gives a short laugh. “If it’s mine, there’s a lot less for us to do, huh? I feel like if it‘s mine, we can just kind of chill. Which would be kind of nice. But I'm assuming that… yeah, yours makes a lot more sense, now that I think about it.”

“I admit, Wayne Newton…” Minerva pauses. “I am kind of excited.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I suspect our destiny will soon be fulfilled.”

As Minerva and Duck are talking, Beacon frees Mama and Vincent from their pods, and just as he finishes, there is a click, and the room they stand in comes to life.

“Please wait,” says a computer generated voice.

Aubrey looks around. “Huh.”

“We have decided to ask you to please remain where you are. Your aggressive actions have resulted in significant damage to core stability. Our current situation is unprecedented. We ask you to patiently wait in this area until a decision can be made regarding your aforementioned aggressive actions.”

Aubrey turns to the metal door. “Hey, um… guys? Uh, um… I would like to posit that, perhaps, we should not wait here for them to determine a course of action based on our, uh, aggressive, y'know, stuff. Um, we should probably…. Y'know, get out, right?”

Vincent charges the door and rams it with his head, falling to the ground when he is unsuccessful in ramming it open. As he stands and mumbles a short explanation, Aubrey puts her hand on the door. Soon enough, it glows red and flies away from the wall, leading them into a passageway to a larger room.

“Hey, listen,” Thacker says. “ Uh, we got a… a couple issues. I just tried to, y'know, brain scan, y'know, do the old mind-meld, and… there- there‘s some badass shit out there. Uh, I didn‘t get any kind of read, but it‘s like this, uh… great big, uh… uh, bee hive mind. So… I think we need to proceed with caution.”

“Yeah, what‘s that, uh… y‘all hear that machinery or whatever it is? Some sort of grinding or some noise that just started up,” Duck points out.

Thacker grimaces. “Yeah, I think I did that. Um…”

“Ah, _cool,_ man.”

“Did I do thaaat?” Thacker laughs nervously.

“Aw, yeah, that was big when you- fuckin’-”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah.”

Aubrey clears her throat. “If I may, once again, um… perhaps we should- y’know- flee?”

“Yeah, let’s truck,” Duck agrees.

They enter the new room, and under the layers of dust and decay, they take in the very sci-fi scene in front of them.

“Alright, yeah. Yeah. Duck, yeah. Full on alien encounter. Eugene‘s gonna absolutely shit,” Mama says.

“This is huge. Yeah, no, I don‘t actually think it‘s that anymore. Minerva says we‘re in the world of light, heartbreakingly. Um, so, here‘s- alright, so we got…” Duck sighs. “I mean, I feel like we need to get in this little car and get the hell out of here, y‘all. I don't know. I- I don‘t like what that machine‘s doing. I actually don‘t have any clue… let me see if I can figure it out. One sec.”

-

Beacon sees Duck approach the monitor, and he follows, if only to not disappear when the size of this room proves to be bigger than his radius to his blade.

He sees a humanoid shape on the monitor, filling up like a progress bar, and as it becomes more specific, Beacon sees something like recognition flash in Duck’s eyes, and then a flat sort of shock, and then _anger._

Beacon thinks he maybe shouldn’t express his excitement at that in this very moment, so he fights his impending grin away.

“Well… that- that fuckin‘ tears it. This isn‘t aliens. I am gonna rip this place the fuck apart, though,” Duck decides.

Beacon’s hands are in shaking fists held close to his chest, and he gives up on not grinning. Finally. _Finally._

Aubrey blinks. “Oh. Okay!”

“Yeah, that‘s- you see that, uh… that little fuckin‘, uh, Lego it‘s putting together there is my sister. And… that‘s fucked up. So now, me and my man, Beacon-”

“Yes!” Beacon cheers. “Yes!!”  
  


“Me and my man Beacon are about to tear this place the fuck apart. And then we‘ll get in that little car, and we‘ll go see what else I can tear apart. How‘s that sound, everybody? Quick vote.”

He pulls out his blade and slams the hilt into the tank, sending spiderweb cracks through it just before Beacon steps back and delivers the breaking blow with the heel of his boot. The glass shatters as Beacon continues to laugh and cheer.

As the glass falls in on itself and the gases being pumped inside disperse throughout the room, an alarm begins to blare, and the silhouette of Duck sister falls apart.

“Uh, shall we continue our tour?” Aubrey suggests.

Thacker laughs. “Our tour of destruction?”

“Yes. Let us head for the.. y’know, the monorail.”

Before they can, though, a light in the gases from the tank starts to form into one of those four-armed things. It puts its hands up, as if to placate the group.

“Hey, if you’re with them, you better start fuckin’ talkin’,” Duck says, pointing his blade at it.

It points to where its mouth would be if it had one, and shakes its head, then points to a computer and starts to creep in that direction.

“Uh… okay. You can't talk, so you're gonna use the computer. Cool. I gotcha.” Aubrey nods.

Thacker raises a hand. “Can I- can I point out that we've already been told that these four-armed bastards are the ones that caused the whole war between the Quell and us, and they were behind all that stuff, and we‘re just gonna let him walk over there to that machine, and doodily doodily doodily, and do whatever he wants?” 

“Thacker, they are not all bad,” Aubrey scolds. “Let us not forget our friend Billy.”

The creature flickers briefly. 

“You knew a good one? You knew a good one?”

“Yes! Yes. He was-”

“Name one good one!”

“Billy! He was the goat who loved pizza!”

The four-armed being finally gets into one of the computers, and the robotic voice it generates breaks up Aubrey and Thacker’s argument.

“Do not be alarmed. I apologize for the rash selection of this form. It was decided it might put you all at ease. I can tell from your expression this was not correct.”

Duck gives a short laugh entirely without amusement. “Uh, yeah, no fucking kidding. What‘s your problem?”

“The facility in which you stand has been in operation for eons longer than you have been alive, and this is the first incident of its type we've ever experienced. We were trying to decide our next course of action. We ask you to stay in the room where we placed you until a decision has been made.”

“Uh, just to clarify, is there a course of action you might take that would involve us being dead, or injured, or incapacitated? Y'know, that might result in a bad kind of situation for us?” Aubrey asks.

“At this very moment, the deliberative operational mind is deciding whether or not to grant your worlds clemency, and cease pairing operations between them. If you seek to save your worlds and yourselves, you would do well to act peacefully during the remainder of your stay here.”

Beacon glances at Minerva to find her seething with rage, her hand resting stiffly at the hilt of her sword.

“I mean, direct and fair. Thank you so much for that,” Duck says. “Hey, uh, you mentioned pairing operations. Y'know, we‘re lower life forms, obviously. Can you, um… can you dig into that a little bit?”

It cocks its head slightly, then turns back to the computer. A different voice speaks, this time. 

“Query: Should the invading life forms be informed of Reconciliations mission statement?”

There is a pause.

“11.03% affirm.” It looks at the group, and then in its original voice, ‘speaks’ again. “No.”

Aubrey puts her hands on her hips. “Huh.”

“Well, thank you so much for your sort of… take on this. Um… Minerva, do you have any… any thoughts? You ever- you have any idea what they‘re talking about? This pairing shit?” Duck looks over to Minerva and startles at her expression. He glances nervously to her hand at her weapon before speaking again. “Hey, maybe pump the brakes a little bit, alright? Let‘s just talk it. I'm pissed off as you are. Well, no, fuck. You are more pissed off than I am, clearly. I'm moderately pissed. I'm at about a six. You look like you're at a 14. But like, let‘s… can we just talk about it first?”

“I assure you, any attempts at resistance through physical violence will pizza be futile,” the figure says.

Everyone freezes. 

“Pi-”

“Wh-”

“Pizza?”

“What?”  
  


“Excuse me?”

“What? Say it one more time. Say it again. Repeat,” Duck demands.

The figure has stopped moving, gone static as it slowly phases down and through the floor. On the monitor behind it, something is invisibly scrolling through multitudes of files, running dozens of operations. Slowly, the indecipherable letters start to change into English.

They all gather around the monitor and read of Locust Prime’s repeated rise and fall, and their genocidal plan to stop such a thing from happening again. As they reach the end of the document, the screen goes black.

“Can I just say something real quick? I mean, it is aliens,” Duck says.

“Okay, yes,” Aubrey concedes.

Thacker sighs. “You were right. You- yes.”

“I mean, I thought I was havin‘ a kind of crisis of conscious there, but… it is aliens, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Yep. Well, dead aliens. Y’know.”

“Yeah,” Duck nods. “No, that’s true. That’s a fair point. Thank you.”

“It‘s computers. Y'know what? Y'know, Captain Kirk would just ask it some question, and it would just screw it up. Think we could get away with that?” Thacker suggests.

“Sooo… I would say that, no matter what, they sound like real pieces of shit.” Aubrey laughs. “Am I right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, real fuckin’ scumbags.”

“So they‘re gonna be like, ‘Well, please be peaceful, and we‘re figuring out what to do,’ or whatever. But like… they kind of seem like pieces of shit, and even if they let us, y'know, chill out or whatever, they‘re just gonna do this, like, again, to like, other places. And they‘ve done it at least to Minerva‘s, which, Minerva… fuck them, am I right?”

Minerva nods shortly. “Yes, fuck them, Aubrey Little.”

“Yes.”

As Aubrey says that, a bell chimes, and a transport pod on the monorail lights up green, its door sliding open.

“Well… “I believe that‘s our cue to go fuck it all up.”

Beacon grins. “Finally.”

-

“Query: Should pairing 14198, Earth-Sylvain, be granted clemency?”

Everyone holds their breath as they wait for the decision.

“13.11% affirm.”

Aubrey is the first to breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay. Y'know what, I actually find that, uh, little, uh… y'know, it puts me a little at ease, ‘cause I thought we were gonna have to make a big speech about, oh, even though you granted clemency to us, what about the other planets, and we still have to do it… right? But now… we don‘t have to bother with all that. So that‘s kind of nice.”

“Hey, is there anybody that wants to chat? I mean, I know you're all in computers or whatever, but… does anybody talk, uh, earthling?”

Just as Beacon is about to snap at Duck for trying to _talk it out_ with the things that so clearly want to _kill him and everyone in this room,_ the transport pods all shut, locking them in with a full set of organic printers that are now printing out dozens of hostile things very quickly. 

“Well, I guess that’s a no, huh?”

“Yeah, that… yeah. That kind of reads like maybe talking is done,” Aubrey agrees.

“It reads like… hey, y‘all, this reads super aggressive. I don't know if we‘re at a cultural impasse, maybe. Hey, we‘re not lifting a hand against y‘all. We‘re not starting anything, here. I just wanted to talk. Y‘all are the original pacifists, right?”

“Don’t group me into this _we,_ Duck Newton,” Beacon hisses.

“Ignore him.”

“Query: Are the extraterrestrial invaders engaging in deception? … 89.84% affirm.”

Aubrey laughs. “Now, listen, you all don‘t know Duck like I do. Believe me- he cannot engage in deception to save his life.”

“He’s also an employee of the federal government,” Thacker adds.

The percent changes to 98.64%.

“Uh, alright. Well, I gave it the ol‘ college, huh?” Duck says. “Alright. I tried that approach. So, um, let me try a different one. Uh… hi. I'm Wayne Newton. Everybody calls me Duck. Uh, I'm a chosen one, and I never really understood what that meant, and I guess I still don‘t… but I look around here, and I reckon I'm just about the toughest son of a bitch on this ship. 

So… here‘s what I think I'm chosen to do. I'm gonna kill you-” he points at one of the figures approaching him. “- and you, and you, and you, and you, and I hope you got more. ‘Cause I'm just gettin‘ started. And my sword…” he laughs, and Beacon waves a sharpened arm. “Uh, well, you‘ll see. He‘s just a mean son of a bitch, too. So uh, listen, we tried to talk it out, and uh… I think we just go ahead and go. How ‘bout that, weird computer? How‘s that sound?”

And with that, he swings his blade and slices off the head of the nearest figure. As it connects, Beacon is hit with a burst of energy, one that he’d gotten when he sliced through those pods when Duck woke up, and he bounces on his heels.

“Hey, I got a query for ya. Where‘s my fuckin‘ head? Oh no! That kickass human chopped it off. Fuck you! Come on!”

Its headless body tries to ram into Duck before it disintegrates, but Beacon moves in and speeds up the process with two quick slashes to its midsection, grinning wildly.

Minerva nearby draws her blade, and as she catches Beacon’s line of sight, she returns his expression exactly. She laughs and cheers as she finally enacts revenge on the true killers of her planet.

Vincent and Mama find themselves unarmed and nervous, but they seem to manage with a bit of help from Aubrey’s magic, and it doesn’t matter much to Beacon when there are more four-armed things waiting to be brutalized.

Duck has jumped in front of Aubrey and Thacker to fight the creatures, and Beacon follows suit, falling into place beside him as they pick off the beings charging at them.

As one approaches with another close behind, Beacon looks to Duck, a glint in his eyes. “Get ready to duck, Newton,” he says, and Duck snorts, but nods in understanding.

The being lunges for Duck with both sets of arms, but misses narrowly as he crouches down, leaving room for Beacon to come charging up and over him. It reaches up, making another grab at Beacon in the air, and he grabs its arms as he flips, using his momentum to flip it as well, throwing it into its friend as he lands behind them. Duck whips his blade around both beings as they collide, pulling it through cleanly just as Beacon sharpens his arm again and stabs through both of the figures.

“Ha!” Beacon laughs triumphantly, jumping up and down from the thrumming energy passing through him.

“Well done!” Minerva shouts as she spears through another being, smiling.

More and more beings come after the group, and they pick them off one by one, but they keep coming. Eventually, Duck looks to the printers, and turns to the group.

“Hey, y‘all, I got a plan! I'm gonna- I'll- uh, but I can't say it, ‘cause the super smart computer. So it‘s gonna… I'm just gonna… do it!”

“Okay, thanks for sharing, Duck,” Aubrey responds, shooting a fireball at one of the figures.

“Do what you gotta do, Wayne Newton!”

“Y'know, a problem that we always struggle with at the Forestry Service? Paper jams. Y'know what I mean? In one of- y'know where you get a paper jam?”

“Duck, honey, we don‘t really need to know what you're doin‘,” Mama shouts from the other end of the room. “Just go- just go do it, okay?”

She gets hit by a figure, and Minerva jumps in to help her. “Yes, it’s not a great monologue time!”

Duck nods, and turns to Beacon. “You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down?”

“Duck Newton, I hear you loud and clear,” Beacon responds.

Duck runs for the printers, and Beacon follows at his back, slashing ruthlessly at the monsters that try to follow. He makes it up on top of the printers and jams Beacon into the wall, carving through and severing all of the tubes connecting to them in a shower of sparks.

“I meant- hey, I meant like… I meant like a printer. Like a jam you get in a printer,” he calls to the group.

“Ohh!” Aubrey nods.

“That‘s the thing I was trying to hint… doesn‘t matter now.”

Beacon rolls his eyes, still grinning.

A figurative lightbulb seems to turn on suddenly over Aubrey’s head. She closes her eyes for just a moment, speaking a request to her magic, but she doesn’t even finish the sentence before her eyes open, radiant orange, and her hands move, collecting the material from the broken tubes in the air and bringing it together. The voice of Sylvain speaks.

_“Billy.”_

A column of the materials swirls around Aubrey, and she disappears for a moment. There is a flash of light, and Aubrey is revealed again, holding Hollywood celebrity Ryan Gosling by the shoulder.

“Pizza-a-a!”

“Hell yeah, pizza!” Aubrey cheers.

Billy looks to Duck, and beams. “Ah, Duuuck!! Du-u-uck!”

Duck smiles, shaking his head. “Yeah, man. Naw, man, this is so cool. For sure, I'm loving this. But like…” He laughs. “You could‘ve gotten us a ninja or something, man!”

“Duck, he‘s our inside guy! He knows how the computers work, Duck!”

“Fuckin’- my nephew knows how computers work.”

Billy points to the core, and Beacon experiences pure tunnel vision as he makes a realization he’d been too caught up in fighting to make before.

  
That _dome._

As Thacker puts his hands on it, attempting to send a message to its occupants, and Billy runs a string of commands that shatters the red shell protecting it, Beacon only has one thought. That urge that’s been lingering in the back of his mind ever since he saw this is coming to fruition, and it’s coming to fruition _now._

He turns, looking up to where Duck stands on top of the printers. “Duck Newton-”

“I know.”

Beacon is almost shaking with excitement as he disappears and manifests again next to his Chosen.

“Y’know, Beacon,” Duck starts, turning to grin at him. “You’re the worst talking sword I’ve ever wielded.”

Beacon laughs. “And you are the worst Chosen I have ever been wielded by.”

“Ready to kick that dome’s ass?”

“Nothing would please me more.”

Duck raises his hand for a high five, and Beacon, for once, obliges before disappearing into his blade.

“Hey, I got some bad news. Not for y‘all down there- you're cool. The dome? Cybertron or what the fuck? Bad news. The only one of you all I gave a shit about is now out here. So… here comes Duck! I‘m tryin‘ it. I don't know if that‘s anything,” Duck shouts, and then he’s soaring through the air, Beacon raised, illuminated by panicked flashes of light that the dome sends out in futile attempts to stop him that Beacon carves through effortlessly, and then he pierces through into the dome. Duck slides off the edge, and he is left there.

“Query: Has Reconciliation surpassed the belligerence limit? 20.63% affirm.”

Beacon manifests again, and he laughs loudly, standing atop the dome.

_41.09% affirm._

Minerva starts laughing as well. “Oh, Wayne Newton… I get it now!”

“What?”

“Haven't you shared my curiosity, Wayne Newton? Of why our order was entrusted with wielding and protecting such an angry, angry blade?” 

“Oh my god.”

She nods and points up to Beacon, who looks back to her, shrieking with laughter, every one of his edges as sharp as his blade. He feels himself flicker a few times with the sheer amount of power that rushes through him.

_61.56% affirm._

“There goes our destiny.”

Duck laughs. “Sorry, dipshits!” he shouts. “Now he’s your problem!”

Beacon’s smile seems to almost split his face as he grabs his own blade, something he’d never thought to do, let alone thought he would be _able_ to do. 

“Hell yes I am, Duck Newton!”

_100% affirm._

And just as those electronic bastards realize the hell they're in for, he jams the blade even further into the dome, piercing all the way through, cackling all the way down.

The power near overwhelms him, and finally, he understands.

This has never just been his Chosen’s destiny. His Chosen Ones have come and gone, flies in a tornado, rarely ever reaching their _full_ potential. The Chosen is impermanent, he is static, he is the constant that runs from Chosen to Chosen to Chosen, remaining even when they wither with age and disease. He has never served the Chosen. They have served _him._

It dawns on him that they have all been _a_ Chosen, but only one of them has ever been _his,_ because as he delivered Duck Newton to his destiny, Duck Newton just delivered Beacon to _his._

In that moment, filled with power and adrenaline and satisfaction, Beacon decides that maybe his 20 years spent in the Cryptonomica can be forgiven.

And with that in mind, the light at the edge of the darkness, the tower above the fog, the most beautiful, terrible weapon ever crafted, wreaks absolute havoc in the entity that calls itself _Reconciliation._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that is IT! no epilogues since this is beacon centric and ALSO so that i dont have to write it out. imagine whatever you want happening in the epilogues it do not matter. maybe ill make this a little series and write some other noncanon scenes from the apartment sitcom lunar interlude, because that was really fun. but for now! *descends into the depths as the riff from its a departure plays*. 
> 
> thank you for reading.


End file.
